Shattered Knight
by Tim Radley
Summary: KoTOR: Eight months on from the fall of the Star Forge the expected peace has not come to the Republic. The news of Revan's return has become a source of schism and conflict within the galaxy, and Revan himself has his own demons to face.
1. An End to All Council

**Shattered Knight**

By Tim Radley

**1. An End to All Council**

Tamar De'Nolo stood before one of the orbital station's observation ports, gazing down at the planet filling his view.

Coruscant, capital of the republic and zero point of the galaxy; seat of the Senate and the Jedi Council. It was – viewed from orbit at least – spectacular in its beauty. The lights of the planet-spanning city glittered like myriad jewels; a bed of stars and swirling constellations. Space traffic – shuttles, freighters, private yachts, routine fighter patrols – passed his view in a constant stream, their re-entry trails drawing a web-like filigree through the planet's atmosphere. Through the Force, he was aware of the billions of lives spread out below him as a constant, whispering hum – a gently lapping tide.

It was the first time that he – the Tamar version of himself at least – had experienced this particular view outside of holocasts, although his memories told him differently. His memory told him a lot of things, but then, his memory was a compulsive liar.

In a strange way finding out that he was Revan, Jedi Knight turned Dark Lord of the Sith – dark bogeyman and walking catastrophe – had been easy to accept compared to learning that all of his memories were lies and fabrications. The one person in the galaxy he could least afford to trust in was himself, or at least, the self that he had thought he was.

It had been so much easier before the Star Forge and Darth Malak. Then necessity had driven his actions and there was no time to dwell on matters of past and future; no time to think on anything but the now, and act or die.

Tamar found that he almost longed to regain that wonderful simplicity.

He let out a breath. No, that way was dangerously close to self-pity. And worse.

A ghost of his reflection showed in the transparisteel viewport. He was a big man, tall and broad and looking every inch the soldier that he had once imagined himself to be. Shaven-headed with dark skin, his face was hard and angular – broad square cheekbones; fractionally too-full lips; dark, commanding eyes. It possessed a still calm that didn't entirely reflect the reality that underlay it.

Somehow, it looked different to the face he had once known.

Once it had been a comfortable face, not unhandsome but neither exactly remarkable – save for a hint of underpinning charisma that made it slightly more compelling than any of the individual features suggested it should have been. Now though it seemed harder and crueller than it used to be, as if subconsciously he saw traces of the tyrant and monster in its planes and angles.

Tamar heard a door open behind him, jerking out of his introspection, though an observer wouldn't have noticed any outward change. The Force was calm and he received no sense of a threat – quite the opposite – so he didn't look around, instead listening to the quiet rhythm of the person's footsteps as they approached him.

"I was told that I could find you here . . ." a very slight hesitation over his name. ". . . Tamar."

The voice was familiar, and it drew a smile that was completely at odds with his mood of just seconds earlier. "Yuthura! It is . . . it is _so_ good to see you again."

The woman standing next to him, lithe and poised, was a Twi'lek, violet skinned, her graceful head tails bearing striations of darker purple. Dressed in a plain black flightsuit, she was possessed of a quiet strength and a lean elegance edged with steel.

"Truly? I was going to say the same thing." Her answering smile, displaying sharp looking teeth, had the feel of an expression that was being slowly learned anew.

Tamar hesitated. "I . . . worried about you. I don't mean that to sound patronising."

Yuthura blinked, opal eyes looking startled. "You did?"

"I thought you might have headed for Dantooine after Korriban. That I might have sent you to your death."

She nodded slowly. "I did head to Dantooine. Anywhere else would have felt like running away I think, and I couldn't do that. Not after what you'd given to me. The freighter I booked passage on arrived as Darth Malak's fleet was beginning to depart. They were in too much of a hurry to bother with anything so insignificant as us."

Heading to rendezvous with Admiral Karath and the _Leviathan_, Tamar thought but didn't say. He hadn't been back to Dantooine himself in the months since the events on the Star Forge. "I heard that the entire planet was scorched."

Yuthura's head tails shifted on her shoulders, whispering softly against the fabric of her flightsuit. "No, just the Jedi enclave. The rest of Dantooine is too target poor. Even Malak wasn't psychotic enough to waste time and resources bombarding empty grassland. The planet as a whole got off much more lightly than more developed worlds like Taris and Telos did."

"Ah."

"It was bad enough though. The ground was still glowing and half-molten when we landed. The enclave was just . . . gone."

"You had friends there? From before I mean."

"I don't know if they would have called me friend still, after all I had done." She sighed softly. "Or perhaps they would at that." She fell silent for a time before eventually continuing. "But not all the Jedi died. A good number were always outside the enclave at any one time, working among the homesteads and the farming communities, or simply wandering the wilderness."

"That is good to know." It sounded hollow and pathetically inadequate.

"My old teacher was one of the survivors," Yuthura continued after a moment's pause. "He cried when he saw me again. The part of me that still thinks like a Sith hated it – was embarrassed by his weakness. But . . ." she trailed off, smiling once more. "It was wonderful to – to know that somebody cared about me, and had missed me. We Sith give up so much without even realising what we have lost. And the power is such a paltry consolation. I know now that I could never go back to that."

"You are here because you wish to be a Jedi again?" His voice was soft.

She gazed down at the view of Coruscant – all the glittering lights. "I . . . I thought about my path, like you told me to. It took a long time for me to get things straight inside my head, but the surviving Jedi on Dantooine were so kind and patient with me, despite the tragedy they had just suffered. Despite the fact I was part of the enemy that had just inflicted such an atrocity on them. Eventually I started going through some exercises with my old teacher." Her head tails twitched, conveying meaning and emotion he wasn't quite able to pick up on. "I came here to ask the Council to consider allowing me to restart training to be a padawan. It would feel good to be able to help someone else for once. Not to make up for what I have done, but simply for its own sake."

"I'm glad."

For a time a companionable silence fell between them.

"You know that I am Revan," he said eventually, his words statement rather than question.

He got the sense that she was studying him closely, trying to read something from him before she spoke again. "To me I think you will always be Tamar De'Nolo, whatever anyone else says you are," she said at length. "That strangely compelling man I met in the Drunk Side and knew was different, even from the beginning. The man who became my . . . friend."

For a moment, he struggled to speak, touched beyond words. "Thank you," he managed finally, then echoed: "My friend."

"Did you know? On Korriban I mean?"

Tamar shook his head. "I found out shortly afterwards. Our ship was intercepted by Saul Karath's _Leviathan_ when we tried to depart from Dreshdae. I should have been more prepared for that after encountering Bandon – a stupid, stupid oversight."

The consequences of which had almost proved disastrous.

"Karath held us captive until Darth Malak's arrival. Malak was greatly amused to inform me of the truth." He gave a shaky laugh that wasn't anything to do with humour. "After we . . . After we escaped I tried to tell myself it didn't matter – that Revan was dead, and I was still just the same person as I was before I knew the truth; Tamar De'Nolo. The only thing that changed was a name, after all. No knowledge or memories came flooding back to me, and I wasn't suddenly a completely different person. I definitely wasn't the Dark Lord of the Sith."

His gaze followed the brightly glowing manoeuvring thrusters of a republic military shuttle as it began its stately descent to Coruscant's surface. "But that is just denial, isn't it? Running away and hiding from my responsibilities and the truth; burying my head in the sand. At least I don't lie awake at night anymore, looking at my scars and wondering how it is that I don't remember getting any of them. It sounds a tiny thing, but it used to drive me to distraction."

"You lie awake at night for different reasons now." Yuthura sounded suddenly very sad.

At length he nodded.

"For the first time in my life that I can remember, I have found some peace within myself. A touch of harmony and serenity. I think it is what I was always truly looking for, but was too blinded by my hate and anger to see. I . . . I wish I could give some of it back to you."

"We all have to find our own peace within ourselves."

"But that doesn't mean we can't have others help steer us in the right direction. You showed me that."

Tamar opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it again, words unspoken. He had a sudden awareness that they were being observed.

Trying to appear casual, he glanced upwards at the viewing balcony behind and above them. A figure stood there, absolutely still, wrapped in dark hued robes. A cowl covered his or her face, totally concealing it from view, but Tamar still had the impression that they were looking directly down at him.

He felt something strange. A ripple in the Force. His surroundings seemed to shift and change . . .

_He was lying, naked, in a bed that was somehow both strange and familiar at once, covered in drying sweat and filled with a deep, weary muscle-deep ache. _

_Gauzy curtains stirred in a turgidly warm breeze, and there was an air of hazy languidness to the whole scene. His thoughts were slow and pleasantly blurred as he lay there. _

_One entire wall of the bedchamber opened onto a balcony and the night sky, three moons reflecting back enough of the local star's light for it to be bright as twilight on most planets. The smallest of the three moons was bright red, like a malevolent eye gazing down directly at him._

_Strangely, he found that idea amusing._

_A woman stood upon the balcony with her back to him, pale skinned and silvered by the moonlight, lithe and athletic with long, straight black hair._

_She was not Bastila. _

_She was not any of the fake women he remembered from his fabricated past. Women who had never truly existed outside of his head._

_She glanced back at him, over her shoulder, and the look in her eyes made him jolt hard . . ._

"Tamar? Is something wrong?"

Yuthura's voice penetrated through the memory flash. It faded instantly, skeins of mist sliding through his fingers. The cowled figure on the viewing balcony was gone, and there was no sense to indicate that there had ever been anybody truly their.

"Did you see someone?" he gestured. "Up there on the viewing balcony."

Her head tilted fractionally and there was a questioning look in her eyes. "No, I saw nobody. I sensed nobody." A pause. "People do not sneak up on me." Her voice held utter certainty of conviction on that fact.

He knew that he'd seen something though, and the odd vision couldn't just be brushed away. _Another person's memory, carried to him on the Force?_ He wondered briefly. But no. As he'd looked down the length of his body there had been an all too familiar vibroblade scar situated just above his left hip. It had been him in the vision, sure enough.

"You look . . . concerned. Are you all right?"

The only time he'd had any memories from Revan was in connection to Bastila and their bond, either of facing her on his flagship, or through her of the star maps. All significant things, and they had stopped totally after the Star Forge was destroyed. This was somewhat different, he sensed.

"I think perhaps I had a memory," he began hesitantly. "Something from when I was still the Dark Lord."

_The hooded figure . . .._ He wondered briefly if he'd been seeing a ghost.

A ghost of himself.

-s-s-

"What the blazes do you think you're playing at, boy?"

Tamar let out his breath, lowering the focus stone hanging suspended in the air in front of him back into its setting. It was an exercise for neophyte padawans, and since it only took the tiniest fraction of his concentration to perform, it hadn't been doing its job – inducing a calm meditative state, free of turmoil and emotion – very well in any case.

"And a lovely morning to you too, Jolee. You don't know how much my heart leaps with joy to see your smiling face."

Jolee Bindo's already deep scowl deepened further. "Bah, don't think that you're going to distract me with pleasantries. I may be old, but I'm not senile yet. And did your mother not tell you how sarcasm is neither big, nor clever?"

"To be honest, _old man_, I wouldn't know that, would I?" Tamar unfolded himself from his cross-legged position on the floor and stood up, his movements leanly graceful – a predator lazily stirring itself.

For a moment, Jolee actually shut up and appeared slightly taken aback. It didn't last. "Don't think I'm going to let you duck the question that easily."

Tamar padded across to the window, gazing out at the spectacular view it gave of Coruscant's endless skyline "There was a question? I think your memory is playing tricks on you. Happens to the best of us in time . . ."

Surprisingly no snappy retort was forthcoming, suggesting Jolee really was serious. "Why are you doing this? Going against the council's wishes the way you are."

Tamar paused before responding, weighing his words with care. "By my count twenty-seven separate Republic systems – it may be more now; I haven't checked for the past couple of days since it was all getting a bit depressing – have petitioned the senate for my extradition to face criminal charges: war-crimes, treason and genocide."

"Charges that the Jedi Council were refusing to entertain, I might add. As far as they're concerned, they have passed judgement and the matter is settled. At least it was until you came blundering in like a Bantha with his tail on fire." Jolee snorted. "I mean, offering to surrender yourself to the senate's judgment. What kind of an idiot . . ."

Tamar turned back from the window and looked at Jolee levelly. "This should have been a time of reconciliation and rebuilding, Jolee: a time of newfound peace after years of near constant war. Instead, because of me, we have a situation where we're close to total schism between the senate and the Jedi Council. The republic is close to tearing itself in two."

"The Jedi council would have smoothed things over, given time," Jolee huffed. Tamar didn't miss the doubt in the old man's voice though. "Which has all, of course, become irrelevant – thanks to your moronic pre-emption."

"The Jedi council would _not_ have smoothed things over, and you know that as well as I do. It had gone too far for that." Tamar spoke calmly and reasonably. He might have been discussing weather that was slightly unusual for the time of year. "They misjudged the situation badly. They were carried away by optimism after Malak's defeat, thinking that everyone would find the tale of Revan's redemption a heart-warming parable of hope and renewal. Unfortunately, the rest of the galaxy are not Jedi, and they don't have the Jedi's capacity for infinite forgiveness. Especially not while they're still hurting so badly from the war."

"So, you know best do you? You know better than the Council? Are we perhaps sensing a familiar pattern here? One from the past."

Tamar just looked at him; folded his arms. "This is not quite the same."

"It never is, is it? Not when it affects you personally, rather than someone else." Jolee's gaze cast around the small, plain room. "Aren't you even going to offer me a chair? Can't be standing around like a lose end at my age. Did the Council put no manners at all inside that thick skull of yours?"

Tamar made a quickly stifled exasperated noise. He waved at one of the plain, slightly uncomfortable looking chairs. "My apologies. Please Jolee, take a seat. Make yourself at home."

"No thanks, I prefer to stand." Jolee wandered across the room to stand beside a table, casually picking out a ripe purple fruit from the bowl on top of it and taking a bite. Juice squirted down his chin.

Tamar went on, reciting the arguments he'd been through in his head time and again already. "In the last month alone three previously loyal Republic systems have defected to the Sith. Others are wavering. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You've heard that one, I take it? And to them Revan is more the enemy than the Sith ever were. I've heard the Bothans have issued an ultimatum to the senate and the council. Resolve the Revan situation satisfactorily within thirty days, or they secede. Several others are viewing that one askance, looking to see which way the dice rolls before they act themselves. Tensions are mounting everywhere you look. The way things are going civil war isn't out of the question."

"By the Force, you're arrogant."

Tamar jolted in surprise at Jolee's words, looking as if he'd been slapped.

"The Republic has one slight problem and suddenly you're the only one who can save the day. Arrogant. Unbelievably arrogant. I'll tell you sonny, the galaxy kept on ticking along perfectly well before you showed up, and it'll keep on ticking long after you're gone. It doesn't need you to save it."

Tamar just nodded. "I agree. You're absolutely right. I'm not important, and it ultimately doesn't matter what happens to me. Which is _exactly_ why I have to do this. Tearing ourselves apart over my fate is unbelievably stupid, and it has to stop. One way or another."

Jolee made an exasperated noise. "Of all the stubborn bantha-spawn I've had the misfortune to know . . ." He did, finally, decide to slump into one of the chairs.

Tamar managed a slightly forced chuckle. "You should be pleased. Means that I am learning something from you after all."

"Ha! So tell me, boy. What exactly is your plan of defence here? How are you going to mesmerise the senate and turn them to your side so we can all live happily ever after thanks to you?"

Tamar was silent for a long time, wandering back over to the window, watching the flashing lights of a pleasure yacht as it descended to a nearby rooftop with serene elegance. Finally, he said. "You remember the starmap on Kashyyyk?"

"Like I said. I'm old, not senile."

"And you remember the answer I gave to the computer that Revan . . . that I left behind."

"About sacrificing the city in order to take full advantage of the intelligence you had acquired and stop the war. Yes, I remember."

"It was a truthful answer, Jolee. It is what I would have done. I would have locked all of my compassion away in a box and let millions die, because strategically I could see it made the most sense, and would save many more lives in the long run."

"Maybe it's the right answer. It's a cold, hard answer no doubt, but an answer made without passion and emotion. Like a Jedi, supposedly."

Tamar snorted. "It's an answer made without compassion or empathy. It's the answer of a monster. How different to the old Revan am I, really? The memories may be gone, but it is the same flesh; the same brain tissue. Revan was considered a hero once."

"Ah, I see. It is self-pity as well as arrogance. 'Oh no, I'm awful. How can I possibly live with the guilt of what I've done?' Puhlease. Get a grip of yourself. I detest whiners more than just about anything."

He didn't relent. "How far was my answer from, for example, scorching a planet to make a sector surrender? Or annihilating a sector to gain victory over a quadrant? You can argue that both acts would, ultimately lead to a net saving in life if they resulted in a galactic war being won more quickly. At some point though, a line is crossed. The greater good becomes abominable evil."

"If you know enough to ask the questions, then you already know the answers. You don't worry me boy. I've watched you and seen you act." He shook his head slowly. "Besides, you don't act cold when the chips are down – whatever you may imagine to yourself. What about Bastila on the Star Forge?"

"I . . . I . . . Bastila is linked to me. It would have been easier to turn my saber on myself. And for all that I owed her; all she had sacrificed for me . . ."

Jolee interrupted him. "But the coldly rational and pragmatic thing to do would have been to cut her down as soon as you could. End the threat. You didn't, and don't give me none of that 'her battle meditation saved lives when you turned her back' crap. That consideration didn't enter your head for a single instant, and we both know it."

Tamar remained expressionless. "So I'm a hypocrite as soon as it comes to people I care about directly."

"Yuthura Ban then. The two of you met last night, I understand. Lovely girl, I hear, now she's not a cruel, bloodthirsty Sith and all. Someone who is destined to become a very wise and powerful Jedi in the future. In no small part down to you."

There was a slight flicker of reaction this time. "She had a choice. I simply helped her see it more clearly. She's the one who had the strength to take it."

"I could list a string of other names too, but I won't for fear of how much it would inflate your ego. You're not the old Revan, and you never will be as long as you stay aware of the dangers. So pull your head out of your backside for a moment, and I'll ask again, what is your plan of defence when you face the senate?"

Tamar steepled his fingers together, their tips touching his lips. "Any attempt to defend what I did as Darth Revan is only going to make things worse. Any attempt to dodge responsibility is likewise going to fail."

A snort. "So you're going to throw yourself on the senate's mercy and expect justice. Do you have some kind of martyr complex, boy? Because that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard."

"The Council will not allow my execution," Tamar said in the quiet, reasonable tones of someone who has gone through this very carefully. "They will extract that promise before I'm turned over, and the senate will accede in the spirit of compromise. The fact that I will have come forward of my on initiative in itself gives me a better chance – and at least my friends won't get shot in the back by an endless tide of bounty hunters. I figure I'll most likely be shipped off to some penal colony to live out my life and be forgotten. Who knows? They might even find it in their hearts to forgive me after all."

Another louder snort. "When you can't manage to forgive yourself?"

"At the very worst I'll either be jarred or permafrozen in carbonite." Jarred was the slang term for the now rather reviled process of removing and storing in a living state the brain of a criminal, while harvesting off the body for medical use. It saved space and resource on accommodating lifers and the 'prisoner' was fed neutrally pleasant stimulus to give them an illusion of physical existence.

"And those choices are meant to be better than execution are they?" Jolee sounded disgusted. At least when a Jedi died they became one with the Force.

"Says the man who chose a self-imposed exile in Kashyyyk's shadowlands."

"Bah, that's completely different."

"Is it?"

"Of course it is!" Jolee glowered. "And what does Bastila have to say about it all? I can't believe she's just letting you up and do this without an argument, and she certainly has a big stake in what you're proposing. Where is she, by the way?"

Tamar's gaze dropped. He studied the backs of his hands with rather more care and interest than they probably merited.

"Ah, so that's it. Now I think I'm finally beginning to understand. You had a row with your girl, and now, all of a sudden, life isn't worth living anymore. Angst, angst, angst. Moan, moan, moan. Bah! Pathetic, self indulgent drivel."

Tamar didn't respond.

"You _children_. Honestly." Jolee let out an exasperated breath. "One little fight and it's the end of the world. No one's willing to work for anything these days. They expect it all to be given to them on a silver platter. Happily ever after doesn't just happen you know. You have to work for it every single moment."

Finally, Tamar looked up again. "There was no fight," he said softly. "I wish there had been a fight. With a fight, you can make up afterwards. You can apologise and try to make amends."

"So what happened?" For once Jolee seemed quiet and serious, the crotchety old coot act pushed to the side.

It was a while before Tamar responded. "There is no passion."

"What!"

Waking up in bed for the first time beside the person you had convinced yourself was the love of your life – a moment that should have been one of the most beautiful and wonderful any person ever experienced – only to find it the most awfully uncomfortable and distressing event of your entire life. The whole year and a bit since he had been Tamar and not Revan, at least. The bond that existed between them had left neither of them with anywhere to hide or pretend about their feelings. It had felt more callous and cruel than driving his lightsaber through her heart, and the link had left him unable to lie or soften the blow in any way. He had wanted to weep afterwards.

"I'm not quoting the damnable Jedi code there either. Unlike the Jedi order, I don't happen to believe that passion is always a bad thing. Sometimes I would even venture to say it is absolutely necessary." He let out a breath of pent up emotion, then whispered. "I would have been happy with serenity."

Jolee looked hesitant, with no flippant words or easy wisdom. "Like I said, relationships need work," he said gently. "They don't happen by magic, and they're not always easy. I forget sometimes that really, you're just one year old, and lord knows what kind of a mess the council left behind when they tried to build you a new set of memories . . .. What I'm saying is that – just because it didn't immediately live up to some idealised notion you've been given – doesn't mean it can't work. The two of you are good together. Even I can see that."

Tamar shook his head, cutting the old man off. "No. No. That isn't it, Jolee. You can join two random people together with a bond, but that doesn't mean they are going to love each other. She is . . . she is my salvation, and I owe her everything that I am today and more, but gratitude is not the same thing as love. She is my closest friend – was at least, before I did this to her – but that doesn't mean that it is automatically meant to be more than that. I thought this was what she wanted, so I convinced myself that I felt it too, but I was lying. To her, and myself. Sometimes it just doesn't work, however much you think it should."

There was an uncomfortable period of silence. After a while, Tamar's expression returned to a calmly serene mask. "I have an appointment with the council. I shouldn't keep them waiting, for all it is likely to be unpleasant."

"What can I do to convince you to turn back from this?" Jolee asked as Tamar walked past him.

"I don't know," Tamar answered softly, not looking at him. "Find some evidence, maybe, that I have a heart somewhere."

-s-s-

"You there. Padawan. Might I have a moment?"

The padawan in question – a boy of fifteen or sixteen – jolted in surprise. It was very difficult to catch a Force sensitive person unawares, since the Force flowed through all living things to some degree. He hadn't had so much of a hint of another person's presence however.

The figure who'd spoken was shadowed beneath the fleshy branches of a maoib tree, blocking the narrow path through the heart of the formal gardens. It was very difficult to get any sense of them at all, even broad details like species or gender obfuscated heavily.

"I – I am on urgent business for the Council," the Padawan stammered. "Perhaps you could find someone else to assist you?" A nervous sense of pride hung like a cloud in the air around him. For all it was only the most trivial messenger duties he'd been given, it was his first real task in the Council's service. His desperation not to make even the smallest mistake was painted on him brightly.

"It will take but the briefest seconds. I'm sure that the Council would not mind a slight delay, and I doubt they would wish you to ignore all other aspects of your service simply because you wish to make a good impression with them."

Palpable uneasiness filled the padawan, colouring the nervous pride. He was still getting no sense of the person in front of him, which really shouldn't have been the case. "I'm sorry, but I honestly don't have time to . . ."

"It would be the behaviour of a true Jedi to stop and help someone in need," the voice was gently persuasive; somehow seductive.

The padawan nodded slowly. "It would be the behaviour of a true Jedi to stop and help someone in need," he agreed.

"Good, good." The figure stepped forward, out of the shadows, and the padawan smiled dopily.

The figure extended an arm around the padawan's shoulder with the easy familiarity of a long time friend. There was a brief flash of movement, something resembling silver threads emerging from between the fingers of a black gloved hand, weaving in the air, before striking like vipers at the exposed flesh of the padawan's neck.

The padawan stiffened, making a wet sounding gasp. His eyes lost what small amount of focus they still had.

-s-s-

Tamar stopped hard in his tracks outside the council meeting chamber.

It had nothing to do with the fact that Yuthura Ban had just emerged from the chamber in front of him and was now smiling a slightly surprised, but otherwise heartfelt greeting. Sudden, splitting pain spiked through his head before he could acknowledge her, and a grimace twisted his face. He pressed the heel of his hand to his brow, blinking rapidly.

"Is something wrong?" Yuthura's voice came from several light years away, blurred and fluctuating, its normally compelling timbre breaking up like a bad comm. link.

Tamar's mouth moved in a manner that suggested he was trying to produce words, though no sound emerged. The pain grew exponentially, until it felt like white-hot metal spikes were being hammered through his skull. Dimly aware that Yuthura was holding his arm, he struggled with pain-suppression and meditation techniques.

A noise like a hissing kettle emerged from his throat. Colours flashed, wiping out his vision in spice-psychosis patterns. Up and down became ambiguous concepts.

He howled. The pain stopped, and suddenly he could see clearly, but he was somewhere else entirely, outside his body. The formal gardens, he realised after getting used to the rather disorientating overhead angle, less than a hundred yards from the main council hall. Something moved beneath him.

He tried to focus on it, but it was nothing more than a shifting ghost of shadows flowing rapidly through the undergrowth. His attempts at getting some kind of handle on what it was met with no more success than trying to grasp hold of a hologram.

Then it became aware of his presence.

The sense of hate and rage directed at him made him flinch. He'd never felt anything like it, even standing against Malak on the Star Forge's viewing platform. It was pure, bubbling black venom. It lashed out, and a dark, twisting wall of Force – like a writhing nest of serpents – flew up towards his face as he tried desperately to twist away. He was dimly aware of the glass panes that roofed the gardens shattering, falling down around him in a brilliantly glittering razor-sharp rain . . .

Then he was back in his body again.

He had fallen to his knees at some point. Yuthura was holding his face between her hands, kneeling in front of him with her forehead resting lightly against his. He could feel the Force flowing from her, around him in a gently soothing envelope.

As he looked at her, he briefly saw another face superimposed over the top of hers. The woman he had glimpsed in his vision last night. Pale, dark eyes, vivid red mouth twisted in a cynical half-smile. She winked at him, seemingly amused, but under the surface, he could sense that she boiled.

He jolted and she was Yuthura again, staring at him intently.

"What happened?" she asked as they both stood up.

He swallowed, struggling to reorient himself and locate a calm inner centre where he could go over what he'd seen more rationally. "There is . . . someone in the formal gardens. Someone who shouldn't be there, and doesn't mean any of us well."

A young male padawan brushed past them, apparently in a hurry. Neither he nor Yuthura really registered his presence.

"Did you tell anyone about what happened to you last night?" she asked quietly.

"I . . . was going to mention it when I spoke to Master Vandar and the Council," he evaded, starting to walk rapidly away from the council chambers. He was filled with an ominous sense of low-grade dread that refused to simply be smoothed away. In his head, he kept seeing the shadows moving rapidly through the undergrowth – the strange woman's twisted smile. Yuthura followed after him wordlessly.

As they reached the gardens a muffled detonation – low, rumbling thunder – came from directly behind them.

-s-s-

"No! Step back from the barrier. Do it now!" Tamar's voice contained all the authority of the golden general who had led the Republic to victory over the Mandalorians; the Dark Lord of the Sith who had later nearly conquered the galaxy.

Reluctantly the trio of Jedi knights obeyed, though they looked at him with accusing eyes.

Alarms blared out a strident cacophony. Lights flashed warning red. Water poured down in torrents from sprinklers overhead, soaking him, running in gleaming rivulets down his bare scalp. An environmental barrier, similar to an emergency vacuum door on a spaceship, had descended from the ceiling to block the corridor leading to the council chambers behind him, sealing it off hermetically.

Through transparisteel panels set in the barrier smoke and fumes could be seen pouring from the council chamber's shattered doors.

"People are still alive in there!" one of the Jedi knights protested.

"No they are not," Tamar met the man's gaze with a brutal calm he didn't feel. "They are _all_ dead. Some of them may not have stopped moving yet, but they are dead. Now step back."

The man looked like he'd just been slapped across the face.

Something thudded into the barrier behind Tamar, making him jump. He looked around, feeling sick in his stomach.

A Twi'lek had staggered out from the council chambers and stumbled against the barrier. One of his head tails had been severed and his hands left bloody prints behind as they clawed ineffectually at the transparisteel. More blood frothed from his mouth; fell in dark tears from his eyes; perspired from his skin like sweat.

For an awful moment, looking into the Twi'lek's delirious, dying eyes Tamar was reminded of Master Zhar – his Jedi teacher. But Zhar had died in Malak's strike on Dantooine.

Others that he knew were inside though. Master Vandar was. Master Vrook was. So were ten other Jedi Masters; amongst the wisest and most learned in the galaxy. All now dead, or shortly to be dead.

He could feel their lingering agonies, a terrible shadow tainting the Force like a sickness. _I should have been in there_, he thought grimly. _If I hadn't been chasing shadows_.

"That's Master Quillor," one of the Jedi Knights said. His voice held an undertone of hysteria, calm and serenity not even in the same country as it.

"We can't . . . can't just stand by and watch. We have to help . . ." He started forward again.

The Twi'lek collapsed onto his back, twitching spasmodically. His skin appeared to be dissolving.

"There's nothing we can do," Tamar told him gently, tearing his gaze away from the dying Master. His brain was struggling to grasp how this could possibly have happened.

"But . . ."

"If we open the barrier, or puncture it in any way, we will release the bio-toxins in there into the rest of the building. The rest of the city block. We would be killing ourselves and putting thousands of other lives at risk."

The Jedi knight's hands flexed ineffectually at his sides.

"I know you," Another of them spoke up, his voice quavering. "You're Revan. The traitor. The Dark Lord. This is your fault. You did this!"

"I'm not going to stand by and watch you murder them," the third of the knights added. There was a _snap-hiss_ as his lightsaber ignited.

Tamar turned to face him, gaze stony. "Put that away."

"You don't intimidate me, traitor." The knight's voice implied differently despite the defiant words, trembling badly. The glowing blue-white lightsaber blade didn't waver though.

"I know you feel grief. I know you feel shock, and it's difficult to cope, but this isn't helping," Tamar said softly. "Remember the code. Remember yourself."

The Jedi knight just stared at him. There was hate and anger in his eyes. The Force swirled around him, full of shadows.

"Tamar is right," Yuthura spoke up, having remained silent and watchful up until now. "None of us can do any good here. We have to evacuate the building and stop squabbling amongst ourselves."

"Shut up! I know who you are too, Sith," the knight snarled, rounding on her. "Don't think I don't. This was all a trick, wasn't it? Pretend redemption. Pretend remorse. Trick the council into accepting you back and lowering their guard so you could slaughter them. You and your dark master together."

Tamar had had enough. He reached out with the Force, grasping hold of the Jedi knight's lightsaber and yanking at it hard. It flew from the knight's grasp, and – as it tumbled end over end towards him – he flicked a switch on its hilt and deactivated the blade. It ended up nestling in the palm of his hand. He casually tucked it through his belt.

The Jedi knight gaped at him in shock, before backing off a couple of steps.

Tamar's expression was hard. "If I was still the Dark Lord as you say I would have cut the three of you down in seconds. Now stop behaving like frightened children and start acting like the Jedi you allegedly are. Do as you're told and get out of here!"

Finally, reluctantly, the three turned and walked away.

He stared after them, something tight inside his chest. The sirens continued to blare out their song of doom.

Yuthura lightly touched his shoulder. "Come on. You said it yourself. We can do no good here"

-s-s-

Tamar stood on the rooftop, watching the air ambulances and emergency vehicles that had cordoned off the Jedi consular building in the distance. The sun was setting behind the consulate and the sky was fiery red. It seemed horribly apt. A portent of coming destruction.

Right now newscasts were being beamed across the holoNet, and the news of the strike against the Jedi Council was spreading across the galaxy, no doubt accompanied by a growing tide of hysteria and panic – and perhaps in some quarters, celebration. Twelve of the council struck down in a single stroke, including Master Vandar, the eldest and most respected member. Neither Malak, nor Revan, nor even Exar Kun had managed anything quite like that for all their efforts.

He could feel the lingering shockwaves from the slaughter as dark ripples echoing through the Force.

It made him wonder about Bastila – what she was feeling and thinking now – but the link between them was quiescent, carefully shielded and attenuated by distance so that it was merely a shadow of what it had once been. Sometimes it still felt like the nagging ghost of an amputated limb.

Tamar shifted his stance, the servomotors of his heavy grey and blue armour whispering sub-audibly. What had made him don the armour was difficult to explain. Soldier's instinct perhaps, readying himself for battle. He had never truly been a soldier, his rational brain knew, but he still felt more comfortable in the armour than a Jedi's robes.

Other Jedi viewed him strangely because of it, he knew. A Jedi that used armour, implants, energy shields, and battle stims instead of relying solely on the Force and his lightsaber. Perhaps it seemed to them like a lack of faith on his part – a worrying holdover from the days of the Dark Lord.

Juhani had asked him about it curiously once. His reply to her had been simply that he could use the Force to open doors, but didn't. Instead, he used the door handle like everybody else. He wasn't sure whether she'd understood what he'd been trying to get at or not.

He tensed. He was being watched again.

"My initial intent was for you to die in the explosion too, Revan. In fact, you were almost the main target. But I'm actually glad you survived now. It's going to work out so much better this way, don't you think?"

The voice reminded him of a computerised spaceport announcer, only with less emphasis on the soft and welcoming and more on harsh discipline. She was shielding herself very tightly and he didn't get even the slightest hint of emotion. He turned to face her.

She was tall – six foot at least – but he could tell little else about her appearance-wise. The dark robes and deep cowl concealed everything very effectively, giving not even a shadowed hint of her face. Even her hands were gloved in black.

"Do I know you?" he asked flatly.

She laughed, mechanical and humourless. "I almost feel offended. I thought I would still have at least a small place in your heart, Revan. After all we went through and did together."

"Nothing personal. My memory isn't what it used to be. And I prefer Tamar now."

"Yes, I heard that. The Council's brainwashed little soldier boy. Personally I think a slow and painful death would have been more merciful."

"No doubt you'd be more than happy to make up for the Council's careless oversight."

"Perhaps." She laughed again, and this time there _was_ an ever so slight trace to humour. "Although my plans have changed somewhat to adapt to the new circumstances. You should be pleased. I learned the importance of such adaptability from you."

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Though I don't suppose I can simply apologise for whatever it is I did to you."

The black anger and hate that broke through to the surface was startling, even though he had felt it before – if only from a distance. When she spoke however, her voice was calm, almost musing. "You look different, Revan, you know that? Everything physical is just the same, but you still look different. I think it's the expression of a drooling simpleton that does it."

"If you want revenge on me you don't have to bring others into it. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not running. There is no need for more innocent people to suffer on my account."

The anger flared again, though it was swiftly strangled back. "You always were an arrogant bastard. That at least hasn't changed. It proved your downfall in the end. Too clever for your own good."

Tamar simply looked at her.

"All that effort you spent, manipulating the Council into sending Bastila and her strike team against you. Taking the bait of their clumsy trap, letting them onto your flagship and making them think they were succeeding of their own accord, whilst all the while you sat waiting, a spider in his web, ready to devour the flies. You were so blinded by the need to get your hands on her Battle Meditation. The final missing piece to your jigsaw, allied with your ruthless strategic genius and the Star Forge's infinite fleet to bring total victory within weeks.

"All of it undone by a single clumsy turbolaser blast from your dopey kath hound, your web collapsed on top of you."

Still he didn't speak, trying to strain his gaze enough to see the face he expected – the face from his vision; cold and diamond hard, drawn in lines of fury, but beautiful nonetheless. All there was was darkness though.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have removed his jaw for exceeding his orders on Telos. Perhaps he would have stayed loyal that important bit longer. Or perhaps he saw that you intended to replace him with a new favourite toy. Malak never was quite as stupid as he looked."

"There were a lot of things I shouldn't have done way before that," he said softly.

"How sanctimonious to speak so of things you don't even remember. I laugh to see what the council has done to you. I laugh to see how far you have been reduced."

"But you don't do you? Laugh I mean. Not really. Not inside. Or smile, or feel love or friendship, or any hint of peace. It doesn't have to be like that."

"Oh spare me, please. There's nothing more irritating than the born again. Are you expecting me to break down into tears and beg you to show me the way to the lightside? The lightside has just drowned in its own blood."

The image of him lying in bed – Darth Revan – watching as she stood upon the balcony, three moons shining down on them, came back. "We were lovers weren't we? Is that why you hate me so much?"

She seemed suddenly to be looking at him more intently. "Interesting. So not everything was lost after all. I might still be able to extract something vaguely useful from in there, given time."

He didn't respond.

"I would hardly call us lovers though. At best we took some mutual pleasure from each other's flesh."

"Who are you?" That one vision he had of her refused to grow or expand, no matter how hard he tried.

She just shook her head. "I think our conversation has come to an end, don't you? Time for me to leave, and for you to face the consequences for what you did to the Council."

"What are you talking about?" Tamar asked, not quite keeping the startlement out of his voice.

"You haven't seen the security footage, have you? You and your new apprentice – Darth Yuthura? No, I think I like Darth Ban better – striding purposefully away from the council chambers just before the explosion that kills them all. Suspicious don't you think? Two former Sith, supposedly returned to the light, fleeing the scene of such a heinous atrocity? If those investigating were to find any further incriminating evidence – when they search your quarters for example – it would start to look really, really bad. Bad for the Jedi order too – to be so naïve not once, but twice."

Her hate became tinged with black amusement as she spoke. "Congratulations Revan. You're the Dark Lord of the Sith again, whether you want to be or not. At least as far as most of the galaxy will be concerned."

As she began to turn away from him there was a soft sound behind her – the turbo-lift arriving.

Jolee and Yuthura stepped out onto the roof, blocking off any retreat.

-s-s-

"Three against one, Revan? Is that the Jedi's idea of a fair fight?"

Tamar had no sense that she was at all perturbed by the sudden change in odds. Which worried him slightly. He had the definite impression that she still thought the situation well under control. He drew his lightsaber, snapping it on. The cyan blade shone brilliantly in the deepening twilight. Jolee and Yuthura did likewise, sabres glowing green and violet respectively.

"Well, if it isn't another Sith Lord," Jolee grumbled. "Worse than a damn Gizka infestation. Just when you think you've got the last one and another pops up, chewing its way through your sock drawer. You still owe me for those socks, Tamar. Don't think I've forgotten." He shifted his gaze back to the bemused Sith. "Perhaps a word of fashion advice, if you'll take it, my dear? Hooded black robes . . . about forty years out of date. All a bit passé now. A nice shade of orange on the other hand . . . I'm sure you'd cut quite a dash."

"Surrender and I promise that you'll live and be treated well, no matter what you have done." Tamar cut over Jolee's rambling, his voice hard.

"As well as they've treated you, Revan? Lobotomised and enslaved? Thanks, but I'll pass." She made no move to draw a lightsaber of her own, and still didn't seem at all worried.

An object appeared in her hand, seemingly out of nothing. It was spherical and about six-inches in diameter. She tossed it high into the air, its lazy ark involuntarily drawing their respective gazes.

At the apex of its flight, the sphere came to life, whirling and flashing with light, spitting incandescent red blaster fire in all directions. A Baragwin assault drone. Simultaneously what appeared to be black insects the size of cockroaches started to fall from her robes onto the rooftop in a pitter-pattering cascade – an entire swarm of them.

Blaster fire from the drone cracked against the shoulder plate of Tamar's armour, making him stagger slightly but not penetrating. Then the Force was flowing through him fully, and he was parrying the incoming shots with his lightsaber. He heard Jolee yelp as he was struck in the arm; saw Yuthura evading the incandescent energy bolts with the effortlessly flowing grace of the slave-dancer she had once been.

The drone exploded in a crackle of sparks, falling lifelessly back to the rooftop with a clattering bounce as Jolee overloaded its circuitry with the Force.

Several of the roach-droids broke from the main mass of the swarm. Tamar stamped on one that darted too close to him and it exploded concussively. If he hadn't have been wearing his armour he'd have probably lost several toes. Servos amplifying his movements, he jumped quickly back out of range, stumbling fractionally on his badly bruised foot as he landed.

Yuthura had obviously taken note, lightning fast sabre strokes intercepting any of the roaches that came close to her and batting them away. Then Jolee was using the Force like a broom to sweep the robotic insects up and fry them. They detonated like firecrackers – a disorientingly chaotic jumble of sound and dazzlingly bright light.

Everything became still again.

In total, the distraction had lasted no more than a few seconds, but it was plenty long enough to do its job. The Sith had vanished into thin air, no trace of her remaining.

Lightsaber at the ready, Tamar extended subtle feelers of Force out across the rooftop, searching warily for the slightest trace of her. It was as if she had never existed though. He noticed Yuthura backing off slowly, covering any attempt to slip past her to the lift. He could feel himself sweating inside his armour, and the unease he could sense from both her and Jolee only went to amplify his disquiet.

There was a tiny flicker of movement near the far railing. Tamar reacted instantly, sending his lightsaber spinning towards it.

He felt an explosive burst of dark Force and suddenly the lightsaber was violently deflected from its path, flying straight towards Jolee's head. Tamar managed to jerk the weapon back into his grasp just before it could alter the old man's height by about six inches.

Suddenly she was visible again, a fast moving blur of smoke and shadow. Briefly, she glanced back at him. As he watched, she leapt straight over the railing and plunged out of sight.

He sprinted to the spot she'd jumped from.

The drop over the railing was vertiginous and made his head spin – nearly four thousand feet, straight down into a vast canyon of glowing lights. It took several long seconds for him to pick her out against the busy, constantly changing, disorienting backdrop.

She'd fallen just fifty feet, the Force steering her to a slow moving column of traffic – speeders, shuttle buses and vans crawling along in an orderly procession following a pre-defined flight lane. He watched her running along the top of a cylindrical silver transport, robes flapping out behind her. Briefly he felt their eyes meeting as she glanced up and back.

Taking a deep breath in an effort to control the vertigo, he jumped after her.

-s-s-

Jolee watched Yuthura drop out of sight over the roof's edge, her head tails flaring out behind her. Suppressing a shudder, he moved somewhat unenthusiastically to follow.

Looking down he grimaced. He could see the mysterious Sith only as a black dot in the distance, standing on top of a speeder and riding it like a surfboard. Tamar was about a hundred yards behind her, running forward and Force-jumping from vehicle to vehicle; seemingly with no regard whatsoever for his own safety, closing in on his target steadily.

There was no immediate sign of Yuthura, and for a horrible moment, he thought she might have misjudged her jump somehow.

Finally, he spotted her too. Instead of trying to leap onto the traffic column, too far behind the other two to have much of an impact, she'd simply dropped about a hundred feet straight down the face of the building, using the Force to control and slow her descent onto a broad walkway where a rank of speeders were parked.

She was in the process of hotwiring one of them.

"My joints sure ain't gonna like that," he muttered to himself, then stepped back from the edge with a sigh. "I think I'll leave this one to the kids."

-s-s-

Wind buffeted Tamar in the face. They were travelling about 40 knots, lazily sedate by the standard of these vehicles, but plenty fast enough if you were trying to run along on top of one them, a four thousand foot drop to either side.

He was on the curving transparisteel roof of a shuttle bus, dimly aware of the faces of passengers tilting up to gawp at him – the pointing fingers and excited shouts. He didn't look down, or to the sides, instead concentrating solely on the woman in front of him, and on keeping his footing as he ran.

She'd stopped running and he was gaining on her fast. He felt her eyes on him as she looked back, instinctively hitting the wrist control that activated his verpine prototype shield. Multi-coloured light flickered to life around him in a glowing corona.

Just in time.

A storm of crackling Force lightning lashed back at him from her hand. He braced himself, the energy shield absorbing most of the impact, although he could still feel a shadow of its agonising sting flickering through his nerve endings. His forward progress faltered slightly.

People inside the bus screamed and he could feel their sudden fear.

A second burst of lightning crackled around him, more painful this time, his muscles twitching involuntarily as excess electricity discharged through them. The energy shield still held, but one or two more shots were all it would take.

Briefly, he dropped into a crouch, the air alive with static as he steadied himself before attempting to launch himself from the front of the bus to the next vehicle. The Sith made another gesture, and he braced for another lightning strike.

This time it made him stagger and reel dangerously, the energy shield flickering on and off around him, reduced to little more than tatters. A speeder moving parallel to the bus caught some of the Force storm's impact, its electrics shorting out, sending it into a dangerously uncontrolled spin as its autopilot cut off.

Emergency repulsorlifts whined as they struggled to catch it, and suddenly it was flipping over, across the top of the bus. Tamar caught sight of it at the last moment, throwing himself flat as it passed inches above his head, narrowly avoiding getting smeared into paste.

As the speeder span away from the traffic file its driver managed to regain control, stopping it from slamming into the side of the nearest skyscraper with no more than feet to spare. Tamar regained his footing and was immediately hit in the face by a bludgeoning wave of Force.

Unable to catch himself, he bounced back down the length of the bus, tumbling head over heels. He felt himself sliding inexorably down the bus's smoothly curved side with nothing to grab onto to arrest his fall.

Panic clutched at him, but he strangled it down. He hit another wrist control and a grappling hook shot from a compartment in his armour. Micro-razor hooks embedded themselves into the bus's side with a clank, and about fifty feet of rope unspooled as he fell, before jerking him tight.

Shoulder-joint on fire from the strain, he swung back and forth beneath the bus like an erratic pendulum. The wind whipped him this way and that, twisting and spinning him like a top. He made sure to keep looking up at the bus rather than down.

Gritting his teeth, he began to manipulate the Force, using it to impart steadily greater amounts of momentum to his swinging. Soon each swing took him out to the horizontal, perpendicular to the bus. He extended a little more effort, then, at the apex of the next swing hit the control that detached him from the rope. Flying up through the air, he felt his stomach flipping over . . . and landed back on the bus's roof with a solid thud, gripping tight.

Passengers gaped up at him as he started to run forward again. The Sith had her back to him, seemingly oblivious to his survival.

Moving quickly he launched himself through the air, Force jumping from the bus to an old and badly maintained van. It bobbed erratically as he landed, repulsors spluttering. Almost immediately, he jumped onto the roof a two-seat speeder, drawing an angry shout from its driver. Then he leapt to another one, now no more than thirty feet behind his target with her still seemingly oblivious to his presence.

She was crouching on the back of a sleek open-topped sports model speeder, a gloved hand resting on the bald skull of its bith driver as her robes flew out behind her. Tamar could sense the hideous flow of dark Force power – a poisonously vile buzzing – and knew that she had usurped control of the driver's mind.

She glanced back at him, and he sensed, very briefly, surprise.

It was quickly overcome. The Force wave that she directed at him was cancelled out this time by one of his own, the turbulence from the clash of Force powers making both their speeders jolt and bounce wildly.

As soon as they levelled out, he launched himself forward through the air at her like a pouncing vornskr.

It was if she read his mind. While he was still in mid air, her speeder swerved abruptly up and to one side, peeling away from the traffic column.

With nothing to land on, he fell into the glowing abyss with a strangled cry.

-s-s-

The cry choked off after Tamar realised it wasn't serving much of practical purpose. His heart was thumping, adrenaline heightening every sense and stretching each second out so that it seemed to last for minutes. He channelled the Force through his body in an effort to increase the air resistance around him and slow his downward acceleration.

It was a fairly standard Jedi technique, and in normal circumstances it allowed a Jedi to fall for considerable distances relatively safely. Unfortunately, it only slowed acceleration. Eventually, if he fell far enough he would still reach a terminal velocity. Four thousand feet was far enough and then some. All he was effectively doing was ensuring he lived about twenty seconds longer. There was still going to be a hefty and unpleasant splat when he finally hit bottom.

He tried to concentrate and find some measure of the vaunted Jedi serenity, ignoring the wind whipping into his face and trying to snap his neck back. Maybe five hundred feet below him there was another traffic column, looser and faster moving than the one he'd fallen from. His gaze fixed on it and he tried to steer his descent towards it. _If he could just manage to grab onto one of the vehicles_ . . .

The rational portion of his brain, determinedly fatalistic, informed him that he would be travelling too fast to survive even by that point. Deep inside primal, instinctive terror gibbered quietly. His momentary calm was little more than a rapidly disintegrating veneer.

Next time he would ensure his armour had a parachute built in. Or possibly a rocket pack.

Next time. He almost laughed.

Out of nowhere, there was a speeder directly beneath him, diving steeply to match his descent. Its roof had been retracted, and he was lined up with the gap more or less perfectly. He couldn't have avoided the impact even if he'd wanted too.

He smashed into the passenger seat hard enough to blast the breath from his body, his vision momentarily blacking out.

A second or so later consciousness resumed, accompanied by pain. His entire body felt like a single gigantic bruise, and for a moment, he struggled to draw air into his lungs. Then his heart subsided back from his mouth and he was able to breathe again. His head had come to rest in the speeder's foot well, his legs sticking up inelegantly over the seat's back.

Not exactly dignified, but alive at least. He gulped air in relieved gasps.

Beside him, he saw Yuthura struggling with the throttle, trying to pull them out of the dive. The airflow whipped her head tails back, sharp looking teeth gritted in a tight grimace.

He shifted, stifling a groan as he tried to right himself.

Yuthura glanced sidelong at him, the speeder seemingly back under control again. "Nice of you to drop in," she said dryly.

"Thank you," Tamar replied with heartfelt sincerity as he finally managed to get himself the right way up. "Thank you very much indeed."

She grunted softly, eyes searching Coruscant's busy, brilliantly lit skyline.

"There," he pointed at a tiny, fast moving speck high above them. He could still faintly feel the flow of dark Force energy as the Sith invasively controlled the speeder driver's mind.

"I can't feel anything." Her comment was born out of curiosity rather than a contradiction, and she immediately steered towards the point he indicated, flicking through the gears. Tamar's stomach lurched with the sudden change of g-forces.

"Maybe I'm . . . attuned with her somehow," he suggested.

That drew another sidelong glance from Yuthura.

His gaze remained fixed on the distant speck and he drew his blaster pistol – an old, heavily modified model that had reputedly once belonged to Cassus Fett – from its thigh holster. "I get the impression from out conversation that she was someone who served close to me when I was the Dark Lord. I think . . . I think we might have once been lovers."

The Sith's speeder vanished briefly from sight as it took a sharp left turn around the bulk of another soaring skyscraper. It was larger than a speck now, Yuthura gaining steadily. She followed its manoeuvre.

"Did she tell you that?"

As the speeder came back into view, Tamar aimed the pistol, using the Force to guide his aim more than his eyesight. He held off firing right away, waiting for the moment to be right. "I . . . saw it. The vision-memory I had last night."

Yuthura didn't noticeably react. They were closing in noticeably now and the Sith still didn't appear to be aware of their presence, neither accelerating nor making any conspicuous attempt to evade.

"I don't suppose you have any idea who she might be?" he asked her.

"As a rule Dark Lords of the Sith tend to keep any hint of a private life very, very secret." Suddenly the speeder in front of them was swooping through a stream of traffic from an intersection, a cacophony of horns blaring angrily in protest. Yuthura had no hesitation in following.

A speeder passed less than three feet above them and Tamar ducked instinctively. Almost immediately, Yuthura was swerving up again, narrowly avoiding a crunching collision with a bright green and yellow taxi. Then they were through.

"Even so," he went on. "She's obviously extremely strong in the darkside of the Force. I presume she was someone important among the Sith, and wondered if you might have heard something . . ."

Another sharp turn made his stomach lurch unpleasantly.

"The head of Sith intelligence operations under your command was rumoured to be a woman," Yuthura suggested. She sounded slightly hesitant, not taking her eyes off her driving for a moment. "Your velvet glove to Malak's iron fist. Reputedly she didn't survive your overthrow."

Another reason for the hate, he mused. Loss of position and prestige? "Do you know a name?"

"Spy masters don't have names when they can avoid it," Yuthura said. "Especially not Sith ones." Tamar focussed hard on his shot as the back of the Sith's speeder grew ever larger in front of them, sensing that the window of maximum opportunity was drawing close. "Anyway, that's all speculative. I may have been ambitious and unfeasibly proud of my position, but I was never truly at the heart of the war effort. Someone like Uthar might have known better."

_Had I not have killed him_. Tamar squeezed the trigger smoothly, the cushioned kick of the pistol comfortably familiar in his grasp.

His shot was true, slamming into the speeder's starboard engine. For a moment it looked as if it had no effect, then the engine spluttered, spouting plumes of thick black smoke.

The speeder started to wobble and vibrate violently, slowing perceptibly as flames began to flicker around the engine module. An onboard fire-extinguisher kicked in, putting out the flames but making the billowing clouds of smoke even thicker. Tamar fired off another shot, but this time it did little more than scar the bodywork.

She was definitely aware of their presence now. A storm of Force lightning lashed back at them, crackling off the walls of the skyscrapers on either side. Yuthura flipped their speeder through 360° in an effort to evade. Tamar held on tight and suddenly wished he'd had the foresight to put his seatbelt on as he found himself completely upside-down.

As soon as they were the right way up again he fired off a third shot, this time hitting one of the speeder's repulsors.

It span out of control. Just for a moment, it looked like it was going to crash, losing altitude and any hint of forward momentum. After a second or so the Sith managed to reassert a modicum of control, but by that time she was virtually stationary, pointing at ninety degrees to her original heading, several hundred feet below them.

Tamar took a reflexive pot shot at her head, but ended up only taking out the left half of the speeder's windshield. Before he could try again, Yuthura, going too fast to be able to brake in time, overshot. He could hear her muttering curses underneath her breath as she struggled to slow down and turn them about.

He twisted in his seat for another shot, but he couldn't get any kind of fix on the Sith. For a moment he thought they'd lost her, no longer able to feel her through the Force. Then Yuthura picked up the trail of smoke.

It led to an opening in a monolithic trapezoid shaped building, five hundred or so feet below their current altitude on their left. Yuthura steered towards it.

"Go round and come in from the other side," Tamar told her quickly as he evaluated the structure. Some kind of shopping mall, he decided from the flashing signs and advertisements. The opening the Sith had entered via was a broad thoroughfare that passed through the entire central axis of the building.

Yuthura nodded as she altered her course, obviously grasping his intent. This way they either intercepted the limping speeder as it tried to exit the building, or – if the Sith had stopped inside and ditched the speeder – they ran less risk off blundering through any traps she might have left behind.

Disquietingly he still couldn't feel any Force trace of her.

-s-s-

They found the Sith's speeder easily enough. It had been abandoned unceremoniously in a pedestrian area, tilted up on one side in a manner that suggested the landing had been far from smooth. Its starboard engine module was still billowing acrid smoke, bright red fire-fighting droids working hard to prevent an explosion. A crowd of onlookers, humans and aliens alike, gathered around it, gawping. They seemed oblivious of any danger.

Yuthura brought their own speeder to a halt about twenty yards from it and Tamar leapt out quickly, lightsaber in hand but not ignited.

"You there! You can't park here. I'm going to have to . . ." A pair of uniformed security guards, each carrying stun batons immediately ran over.

Tamar held up a hand. "Important Jedi business. You do not want to interfere."

"We do not want to interfere." They both nodded slightly dazedly, walking away again with bemused looks on their faces.

Part of him winced at the casual use of the Force to sway their minds. It felt a dangerously Revan-ish thing to do, despite the urgency of the situation – the quick and easy path. He looked around, trying to find some trace of where the Sith had gone, but could detect no hint. There was certainly no sign of any black-robed figures anywhere in sight.

Of course, she was probably wearing ordinary street clothes under the robe, and had now ditched it, he thought with a grimace as he surveyed the throng of shoppers.

It seemed nigh on incomprehensible that all these people could be going so casually about their business when the Jedi Council had so recently been slaughtered, and the Force was still a raging turmoil. Different perspectives, he supposed. In a way it could almost be construed as comforting – that life went on regardless. His gaze travelled across the fronts of expensive boutiques, nightclubs, and an upscale cantina. There was an exclusive looking restaurant, a health spa and droid shop. But he couldn't sense her at all over the murmuring echoes of all the other minds around him.

"Over there," Yuthura said emphatically as she came alongside him. She was pointing to the restaurant.

He took a moment to see what she was getting at, then – slightly chagrined – he realised that he'd been focusing his energy in completely the wrong direction. There was a distinct echo of confusion about the diner's thoughts, much like that of the security guards he'd just mind-tricked, but he'd missed that fact entirely because he'd been trying to focus upon the Sith herself so intently.

A maitre'd droid tried to intercept them as they strode inside. "Table for two, sir?"

Tamar barged straight past, ignoring the indignant "Well I never!" Yuthura matched him stride for stride.

Chef-droids were busily preparing meals, ignoring their trespass as they walked through the kitchens. He sent feelers of Force out ahead into the building, trying to get some kind of sense of the Sith, but there wasn't so much as a whisper. He caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye . . .

There had been no warning through the Force, but somehow Yuthura had managed to catch the carving knife anyway, just inches from the side of Tamar's head. Its blade had bitten deeply into her fingers, blood dripping down her wrist and arm.

For a single moment, everything was still. Then the air was filled with flying kitchen utensils as all of the chef-droids attacked them at once.

Tamar ducked behind the nearest work surface, pulling Yuthura down with him. A hail of knives thudded into the wall above their heads.

Taking a deep a breath, he leapt up again. He didn't possess Jolee's particular knack for frying a droid's circuitry, but less subtle methods sometimes worked equally well. A violent wave of Force smashed the attacking chef-droids back, skittling them like toy soldiers and sending pots and pans flying.

They didn't waste time trying to finish the droids off, running quickly together deeper into the building.

"How are you doing?" Tamar asked as they paused to get their bearings. He touched Yuthura's wounded hand, which was still bleeding steadily. She had, he thought, saved his life at least twice in the last few minutes.

Concentrating on the wound, he sent warm, gentle tendrils of Force energy flowing into her flesh. She made a small, surprised sound as the bleeding stopped and the edges of the cuts knitted smoothly together, the healing process of days accelerated into seconds.

"Not perhaps what I'd expected from the day," she replied after a brief pause, correctly guessing that he wasn't really asking about her hand. She directed a slightly awkward smile his way. "But thank you for asking."

Before he could say anything else, a dark, distant whisper of Force intruded. Suddenly strange flashes of images were playing behind his eyes, flickering too fast for him to get even the vaguest sense of what they were.

"That way," he indicated, feeling his heart thud with urgency as the flow of images stopped as abruptly as they had started. "Three floors up."

-s-s-

They stopped.

A slender, black clad figure stood motionless at the opposite end of a long corridor to them, seemingly waiting placidly for their arrival. Both Yuthura's and his lightsabers snapped on together, bathing the polished metal walls in violet and cyan glow.

The Sith said nothing, not acknowledging their arrival in any way. As he stared at her, Tamar felt something tight and ominous inside his chest. She could have been well away from here by now, but for some reason she wasn't.

Which meant this was some kind of trap.

Without giving her any warning, he hurled his lightsaber towards her, spinning rapidly down the corridor like a brightly glowing helicopter rotor. It seemed to take her by surprise, because she didn't noticeably react or even try to evade.

And then, belatedly, he saw where a service duct in the wall had been opened, the pipe beneath it cut . . .

"Oh sh . . ." he started, grabbing hold of Yuthura and pulling her to the floor with him as his lightsaber sliced straight through the black clad figure's waist – only to hit nothing more solid than a projected image.

The glowing blade caused the odourless gas hanging in the air around the holo-projection to ignite. A moment later, the entire corridor exploded in a howling maelstrom of flame.

Tamar desperately wrapped them both in a protective sheath of Force energy just as the leading edge of the explosion hit, buffeting them violently. The heat was ferocious, the sound in his ears like a swarm of several thousand shyracks shrieking in unison as they spotted prey. He held his breath to avoid scorching his lungs, feeling as if he was slow roasting inside his armour. The sheath of Force energy began to wither away under the onslaught, and suddenly he could feel the skin on the back of his head blistering. He gritted his teeth hard against the pain. It went on and on, getting hotter and hotter . . .

And then the flames died back almost as quickly as they had appeared. Everything became almost preternaturally calm.

Eyes watering, stung by acrid smoke, he staggered back to his feet. He still didn't risk breathing in, using a technique that allowed Jedi to operate fairly normally for short periods without air. The walls of the corridor were scorched with sooty black smears and the odd little fire burned here and there, but there hadn't been enough flammable material to catch light properly and the explosion had more or less blown itself out. As he let himself draw breath, he began to cough.

Beside him, Yuthura appeared to be relatively unscathed, though her clothing was heavily scorched in several places and her face gleamed with sweat. Her head tails twitched and quivered like agitated snakes as she looked at him with concern, but he waved her off. She seemed to be coping with the acrid air rather better than he was. Her homeworld, Sleheyron, was heavily volcanic and home to mammoth gas refineries and shipbuilding yards, if he recollected correctly. She was no doubt rather more accustomed to the current air conditions than him.

The coughing gradually subsided, although the smoke still made his throat sting. As the pounding in his skull lessened slightly he realised that the ringing noise in his ears was actually the blaring of a fire alarm.

His lightsaber was lying against the wall and he picked it up quickly. It had switched itself off, but looked outwardly intact. He refrained from testing it for fear of igniting any lingering traces of gas. A quick inspection showed that the crystals still appeared to be undamaged and correctly aligned.

A pair of turbo-lifts awaited them at the far end of the corridor. As they approached, one of them started to ascend smoothly into the building's higher reaches. He felt a subtle flicker of Force from inside it.

Yuthura obviously sensed it too, hitting the control on the door of the other lift to call it down. Numbers flickered rapidly as it descended towards them.

Whether it was a subtle disturbance of the Force warning him of danger, or simply a soldier's instinct for a trap he couldn't say. Whatever, as the lift door started to open he instinctively grabbed hold of Yuthura and yanked her hard to the side.

Just in time to avoid a thunderous detonation, shards of shrapnel that would have torn anyone standing in front of the lift to tatters spraying out.

"Whoever she is I'm liking her less and less by the moment," Tamar muttered as the smoke cleared.

Cautiously he peered inside the turbo-lift car. The interior was a shambles, smoke-filled, the control panel hanging off from the wall and sparking intermittently. It was difficult to be sure if it had been ripped free by the explosion or sabotaged deliberately before the lift came down. What he could tell well enough was that it wouldn't be going anywhere in a hurry.

He thought briefly about calling the other turbo-lift back down, but that was just inviting more trouble. Instead, he rather gingerly reached up and opened the service panel on the lift car's roof, taking a glow rod out and directing the light through the gap.

When he'd satisfied himself there were no more traps waiting, he pulled himself up onto the lift car's roof. Yuthura joined him a few moments later. A pair of maintenance ladders were set into either side of the lift shaft's walls – an ascent of about two hundred feet.

"What do you think?" he asked her.

She nodded wordlessly by way of reply. They started climbing as fast as they could.

-s-s-

She was waiting for them on the roof, standing in the middle of an empty shuttle-pad. Her back was turned to them, and she made no more movement than her holo-image had in the corridor below. This time though, Tamar could tell she was the real thing. Her black robe stirred gently around her in the cool evening breeze.

"You never were one to give up on something easily, Revan," she said. Her tone of voice was conversational, although she didn't look round at him.

"Does it really have to be like this?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, I think so Revan, don't you?" She glanced briefly skywards. "Half a legion of republic troops should be arriving in a few minutes. Will you try to run, or stand and fight? Or will you surrender to them like the good little boy you claim to have become?"

"I think when they find you here I won't need to do any of that."

"But I'm not going to be here, am I? I'm just a figment of your imagination." Finally, she did deign to turn around, though it was Yuthura she looked to rather than Tamar. "You don't have to be caught up in this, my dear. That was never my intent."

Yuthura said nothing.

"You always had such promise, Yuthura. Such potential. I would take you as my apprentice in a second. You deserve it more than any of the other loathsome slugs who vie for my acclaim."

There was a brief hesitation before Yuthura replied, although the words themselves held simple certainty. "Once that offer would have sorely tempted me. But I have made my choices. I won't go back."

"No? Ah well." The shoulders beneath the black robe shrugged casually. "Revan has always been good at twisting people, as I know to my cost. Still, I can hardly blame you for a weakness that I too once shared, can I? But know that you _will_ come to regret standing with him today. He _will_ betray you in the end; just like he has done everyone else he has ever known. Know that I told you this when you suffer for it, and that you could have avoided it."

Again, Yuthura said nothing. The Sith dismissed her and started to turn away again.

"Don't I even get to see your face? For old times sake?" Tamar asked her.

She froze, and Tamar knew immediately from the sense he got from her that he'd managed to say either exactly the right – or exactly the wrong – thing. Her gaze snapped back to him.

"My face?" A deathly low laugh. "You want to see my face?"

"Yes please."

She drew her cowl back slightly – enough for the fading light to penetrate its depths. Beneath it was a completely smooth and featureless mirror-finished mask. He could see his own distorted reflection in its surface. After a momentary pause, she reached up and carefully pulled the mask away too. Tamar made a strangled noise, taking an involuntary step back.

What looked out at him was nearer skull than face. As he stared at her in dull horror, it was impossible to tell if this was the same woman from his vision. It could have been anyone. How she had even survived such injuries . . .

But then he looked into her eyes, and he knew.

"You burnt it off with such compassion; so sternly sorrowful and full of love." Her voice was like a sigh.

The mirrored mask was back on again. He could feel his breath grating raggedly inside his chest. "I suppose I could have had a surgeon make me a new one. That is doable now, I think. But I have almost come to like it. It is a reminder of the feelings I have for you. Something that will always be with me, giving me strength.

"Good bye Revan. Take care."

She lifted an arm above her head. A length of rope shot high up into the air from her sleeve. Something that resembled a very small weather balloon was attached to one end, weighting the line. The roar of a spacecraft's engines reached Tamar's ears, growing rapidly in volume. He twisted round to look and received a brief impression of something sleek and black, like a converted fighter, zooming across the rooftop at incredible speed.

A hook trailing from it latched onto the rope, and suddenly the Sith woman was yanked high up into the air, gone so fast that Tamar scarcely had time to blink, let alone react. He gazed up after her, watching as the fighter dwindled into a small dot in Coruscant's darkening sky.

Something small with a parachute attached to it was floating back down towards them. For a fraction of a second he gaped at it, before stirring to action.

"Run!" he yelled.

-s-s-

The outer edge of the explosion's shockwave slammed into Tamar's back before he heard any sound, picking him up and hurling him through the air like a rag doll. It would have thrown him off the roof entirely if he hadn't slammed into a protruding air-conditioning unit hard enough that only his armour saved him from being smashed to a pulp, Jedi or no.

Blood rushed and swirled in his ears. His vision blurred. The pain from his ribs where they'd impacted with the air-conditioning unit was near all consuming.

His extended hand caught hold of Yuthura's arm as she flew limply past, guided by the Force perhaps. Certainly, no conscious thought had been involved. Distantly he heard himself cry out as her entire weight jerked through his shoulder, until it felt like his own arm was going to tear from its socket with the strain.

Then the explosion released its grip on her and she dropped, over the roofs edge. Groaning in pain and desperation, he felt her start to slip inexorably through his fingers, unconscious, or at least in no condition hold on to him.

Frantically he gripped tighter, servomotors whirring to boost his strength. Finally, she stopped sliding, although he had no idea what kind of damage his grip was doing to her flesh. All he knew was that he couldn't – wouldn't – let her go. No matter what.

He struggled to catch his breath – find his centre of calm serenity. The agony in his ribs and shoulder made even that a struggle though, and he could taste blood – coppery bitterness in his mouth. Eventually the hurts of the flesh slid away slightly, his mind becoming detached from them. He began to try to pull Yuthura back up to safety, although with no help at all from her it proved beyond his abilities.

Changing tack he tried to channel the Force into her, though doing so made the pain rear up again like a bad tempered krayt dragon.

After a few seconds, Yuthura made a soft coughing noise. Her eyes flickered open, though they rolled around unseeing. Blood was running down the side her face, from her nose and the corner of her mouth. She made a quietly anguished sobbing sound, but gradually as more Force flowed into her, she seemed to gain a measure of awareness. Suddenly he felt her hands grip tightly hold of his wrist.

"I'm going to try and pull you up," he said. Or tried to say. The only sound that emerged was a croak.

She seemed to get the gist though, her feet scrabbling to find purchase on the building's side.

Suddenly, from behind him, there was the sound of heavy booted footsteps pounding on the explosion-blasted rooftop him. At least twenty sets of feet, moving with military precision. "Don't move! Stand up and step away from the edge!"

About thirty feet below Yuthura, a cleaning droid hovering on repulsors travelled slowly past. It was towing a long line of heavy rubbish bins. Tamar stared at it.

"Stand up now, or we won't hesitate to shoot."

He could sense the fear underlying the stridently commanding voice; the twitchy nervous tension, from both the speaker and the entire squad backing him up. They would shoot at the slightest hint of provocation, he could tell. In fact, they were likely to shoot at the slightest hint of anything, provocation or not.

His gaze fixed with Yuthura's, eyes flicking across to indicate the slow moving line of bins.

She shook her head weakly. "No. I . . . won't." Her teeth bared, stained with blood. "I won't abandon . . . you."

"No choice." Without waiting for an answer he swung her out and released his hold on her, using the Force to help steer her fall safely into one of the bins. To his relief she hit the target accurately, landing on something soft and vanishing from his view.

"This is your finally warning, Revan!"

So it was Revan again. Gritting his teeth against the pain that sawed through his ribs, he forced himself to rise. His balance was completely shot, and he stumbled, coughing harshly. Behind him, someone hissed something, a panicked warning shot passing above his head.

The entire world looped through slow gyrations as he tried to force his body back under control. Obviously he was more badly injured than he'd thought – concussed at the very least. His saliva was bright red with blood as he spat.

The speaker shouted something else, though most of it was lost in the roaring noise that filled his ears. Something about being under arrest . . . murder of the Jedi Council . . .

As he raised his arms in surrender, he felt his legs buckle. He collapsed, face forward, everything fading away to black. At least Yuthura had gotten away, was his final conscious thought.


	2. A Crown For A Sith Lord

**2. A Crown for a Sith Lord**

The Senate complex on Coruscant was, to all intents of purposes, a city in its own right. Covering over a hundred square miles of ground and home to an average of twelve million people – though that number could rise as high as thirty million around the time of key debates – a person could theoretically spend a lifetime walking its endless corridors, hallways and annexes, and still not have seen half of what it contained.

Located in an airy rotunda situated atop a spire that soared nearly 5,000ft above Coruscant's surface, and currently surrounded by a veil of grey cloud, the senate archives surpassed even those maintained by the Jedi – in size at least. In terms of content, unless you were particularly interested in pouring over the minutiae of every political treatise agreed for the past 10,000 years, the Jedi libraries were generally considered a superior resource, but there was still very little in it.

Hundreds of people – senate aides, petitioners, academics, their droid helpers, librarians and assistants – moved between the vast shelves of datacards and computer terminals creating the kind of quietly restrained background noise that you only ever found in a library. Amidst all of this two more droids, accessing a very particular terminal set against a wall, weren't worthy of a second glance.

"Observation: if you take much longer over this the master will likely have expired from old age," HK-47 commented acerbically to his smaller companion – a highly modified T3-M4 utility droid.

"Bee-wop-woo-beep!" T3 retorted shrilly, its probe arm whirring as it twisted back and forth in the computer terminal's interface socket.

"You exaggerate the difficulty, I am certain. Do not think your attention seeking tendencies have gone unnoticed in this quarter."

"Beep-woo-bop-beep."

The amber lenses covering HK-47's optical sensors flickered as its head turned slowly, surveying the other users of the archive. "Sigh: so many meatbags. All that incessant and unseemly sloshing about. It is even worse when they are trying not to make noise. Surely if I exterminated one of them it would not be missed?"

"Beep!" The negative in T3's response was absolutely clear.

"Just a little one. I would snap its neck most quickly."

"Beep-beep!"

HK-47 looked down at the utility droid. "Objection: that strikes me as a fundamentally selfish attitude, especially when there are so many going spare. Nevertheless, I shall restrain my urges." A pause, before it added darkly. "For the moment."

"Er, excuse me, might I have a word?" A hand tapped HK-47's metal shoulder, the assassin droid's head swivelling round with deliberate and contemptuous slowness to face its accoster.

"You are addressing me, organic . . ."

"Woooo," T3 interrupted with a low warning note.

HK-47 gave the utility droid a surreptitious kick. ". . . human?" it finished, conveying the very definite sense that a word had been edited.

"Yes, yes. Indeed." The speaker was a neat, elderly looking gentleman dressed in the robes of a member of the senate advisory staff. "I have something of a fascination with droid design. You might call it a hobby of mine. Rather more than a hobby, perhaps. When I was a child, I was certain that I was going to grow up to be a droid mechanic. I could scarcely have envisaged . . ."

"Is there a point you are attempting to locate?"

"Um . . . ah. I was just curious. I believe I'm familiar with most current droid designations, but I can't place you at all. I thought from the back view you might be a new Aratech model, but up close I can see quite clearly that you're not."

HK simply looked at him fixedly.

The old man became flustered as the silence dragged and no response was forthcoming, stammering. "Um, ah. Aren't you going to answer me?"

"You made a statement. No question was posited."

"Ah, yes. Of course. Um. Might I ask your designation and role?"

HK's amber eyes flared with light. "Answer: I am HK-47. Skilled in protocol, translation, cultural analysis and . . . other duties."

"Other duties?"

"Yes. Other duties. I particularly enjoy my . . . other duties."

The old man looked rather bemused by that. "Well, you certainly are a most handsome machine. Rather an unusual colour, mind. I don't think I've ever seen a protocol droid that particular shade before."

"I find it to be most practical. It helps to hide the bloodstains from all the eviscerations and exsanguinations."

The old man gaped. "Did you just say . . .?"

"Beep-woop-bop!" T3 interjected warningly.

"Ha ha. Just my little attempt at humour. Ha ha," HK-47 deadpanned unconvincingly.

"Oh, how fascinating." The man's face lit up. "You have humour circuitry. Does that mean you're partially autonomous? What kind of processing capabilities and memory capacity do you possess?"

HK fixed him with a withering look, but the man refused to be withered. "Query: Are you familiar with the saying, _curiosity killed the cat_?"

"Hmm?" The man appeared to be somewhat puzzled by the question. "Yes, I believe I have heard that expression. Why do you ask?"

"I have determined, via means of careful and scientific practical experimentation, that curiosity also killed the Twi'lek, the Bith, the Rodian, the Gran, the Zabrak, the Ithorian, the Quarren, the Weequay, the Whipid, and by extrapolation, any other species of organic meatbag that persists in asking me unwanted questions."

The man blanched, taking an involuntary step back. "I have to say whoever programmed your humour module certainly had a distinctly twisted outlook."

"I was not trying to be amusing."

From beside the computer console T3 made a satisfied noise, withdrawing its probe arm.

-s-s-

Tamar sat cross-legged on the floor of the plain eight-by-eight cell, trying to clear his thoughts of all turmoil and think calmly and rationally about his situation.

It was surprisingly difficult, especially considering that up until a few days ago he'd almost wanted to put himself in this position: locked away and no longer even a notional threat to anyone. Funny how the sudden murder of twelve of the most senior and respected members of the Jedi Council, and the emergence of a new Dark Lord of the Sith, tended to alter one's perspective.

Or more precisely, not remotely funny at all.

He couldn't stop thinking about _her_.

Her face. Her lack of face. _You burnt it off with such compassion . . ._

His hand brushed against the neural disrupter collar around his neck. It was switched off at the moment. It was only switched on – disconnecting body from brain, and turning thought into a slow, incoherent delirium – when his guards came to take him to the interrogation chamber. That seemed to happen every few hours at irregular intervals, whereupon he would meticulously repeat what he'd gone through at least a dozen times before.

He wondered briefly if he should inform his jailors that they shouldn't rely on the collar to hold him. It hadn't managed to hold Bastila on Taris, after all. That memory drew a tiny smile. '_Rescued me? . . . It would be more accurate to say that I rescued you'_.

The smile faded away quickly. Hindsight painted the past in different, less comfortable textures. What had seemed at the time to be arrogant haughtiness – though he had found it more amusing than annoying; almost endearing – now looked like what it really was: a hastily constructed facade to cover shock and borderline panic, buying time to think and regain composure.

He grimaced. Coming face to face with the amnesiac Dark Lord Revan, wandering around in Taris's lower city with no minder. Who wouldn't have been shocked? He wondered briefly if he would have coped so well had their situations been reversed.

Footsteps approached the cell – three sets of them, moving with military precision. Odd. Normally there were at least six escorts whenever he was moved, and his meals were brought by droids.

"Thank you. You may go." The female voice was clipped and precise.

"But ma'am . . ."

"I scarcely think that he is a threat, trapped behind a force field and wearing a disruptor collar. Now leave us. That is a direct order."

"Ma'am." The guard's reply sounded unhappy, but shortly afterwards Tamar heard two sets of footsteps retreating.

He rose politely to his feet, looking carefully at the woman standing less than six feet away, separated from him by a layer of glowing force field. "Admiral Dodonna. I am honoured."

She looked at his face intently, not speaking.

"Forgive my surprise, but I would have thought that the commander in chief of the republic fleet might have more important duties than the interrogation of prisoners. And the guard was correct. Even a neural disrupter is not an absolute safeguard against a captive Jedi of sufficient strength."

"Just tell me one thing, Revan." Her voice held the same tightly upright, military efficiency as her bearing. "Did you kill them?"

"No."

She smiled tightly. "Good. Although it's going to take a lot of convincing to persuade certain others of that fact – even without the copious amounts of evidence stacked against you."

"So you believe me then?" He tried not to sound surprised. "Just like that."

"If you were the Dark Lord again you would have betrayed us on the Star Forge and annihilated the bulk of the republic's fleet in the process. You would not have destroyed your most powerful weapon and let such a compelling strategic opportunity pass just to lull us into a false sense of security."

"The dark side is not built on rationality," he said softly.

"But you always were. Coldly rational to the point of it being a form of insanity. That was why you were so dangerous."

"That's not a version of me I even remember now."

She inclined her head a fraction. "No. And I should call you Tamar, shouldn't I. Jedi Knight Tamar De'Nolo. How are your injuries healing? I hear that you were quite badly hurt."

Three broken ribs, a punctured lung and ruptured spleen; badly torn shoulder muscles and severed tendons; a severe concussion, and a ruptured eardrum he hadn't even noticed at the time. Thanks to kolto treatment and the wonders of a Jedi healing trance, all he felt was slightly sore, though he wasn't sure how much exertion he was up to. "I am well enough."

Another fractional nod. "Good."

"You're taking quite a risk coming here, Admiral, even if not in the manner the guards were worried about. If word gets out that you visited me . . .. In the current climate it is going to taint you."

She didn't seem in the least perturbed. "I am not playing politics. Master Vandar was a close personal friend of many years. Fleet admirals don't have the luxury of many close friends. I want the person who killed him found, and I want them to pay for what they've done. The knowledge you have is currently the only means available to me to ensure that happens."

Tamar stifled a sigh as he assessed her flinty expression. "That's the problem, isn't it? We always want someone else to pay."

"I am not interested in trite Jedi wisdom," she snapped. "I want you to tell me about this woman you have mentioned repeatedly in your interrogation transcripts. This Sith."

He hesitated before answering, able to sense her tightly contained anger clearly. "If you've read the interrogation transcripts then you know as much about her as I do. I honestly have not held anything back."

"No?" He got the distinct impression that she didn't quite believe him.

"Nothing factual, no. What can I add? That I think she is the new Dark Lord?"

Admiral Dodonna made a sound that was half humourless laugh and half snort. "We seem to have a plague of Dark Lords of the Sith just now."

"Oh?" He looked at her.

"Two that have publicly claimed the title so far. I'm surprised you haven't heard. It's not exactly classified information. In this case though, it seems that two Sith Lords _are_ better than one – from the Republic's point of view at least. They're too busy trying to stomp each other flat instead of regrouping and rallying the Sith empire. One small mercy to be thankful for, I suppose."

"I've been distracted by problems closer to home," he said. "Who are they?"

"One calls himself Darth Malefic."

"Darth Malefic?" Tamar stifled ill-humoured laughter.

"Something funny?"

"Not really. Sounds like a two-bit cantina duellist, is all." A profession that Tamar knew all about. As two-bit cantina duellists went, he'd been one of the best, for a brief while at least.

"Accurate enough, in its way. Our current intelligence suggests he's a Dark Jedi who headed Malak's elite special forces. A violent psychopath possessed of a hair-trigger temper and even less subtlety than his former master."

"And the other?"

"Darth Auza. We don't know much about him, although there are suggestions that he is an old Sith politician who's been around for a long while in the background, stirring up trouble. He finally saw a chance at being number one and took it, I suppose. Of the two I'd rate him as the more dangerous in the long term, though others disagree."

Tamar mulled this information over, then said: "She's the real one. These others – Auza and Malefic – may both be utterly certain that they're the rightful Dark Lord. But they're not. She is."

"And you base this on?"

"A hunch." He grimaced, spreading his hands before smiling self-mockingly. "On simple pride, if I'm honest. I stood in front of her and felt her measure, and got my backside handed to me on a plate. For all that I don't have any of his memories left there's enough of Revan in me that I'm not about to admit to being beaten by a simple minion." Then, simply. "It is her."

Dodonna nodded. "Oh, I'm not arguing."

Tamar hesitated for a long moment before his next words. "I have been thinking a lot on the Council's assassination – I don't have much else to do but think – and one thing about it has been bothering me. Well, everything about it has been bothering me, but this one thing in particular."

There was sudden wariness in Dodonna's eyes. She didn't trust him, he saw. Not really, for all her words to the contrary. She had probably known this face when Revan had sat behind it – maybe even across from her in councils of war – so he didn't suppose he could blame her for what amounted to simple common sense. "Go on," was all she said.

"They were killed by the release of some kind of bio-toxin. Correct?"

"Correct," she agreed. Her wariness had notched up a level. Her face looked tight.

"But a Jedi Master – in particular Jedi Sentinels like Masters Korel and Starrunner – should be all but immune to poison, able to neutralise, or at least counteract, ill effects almost instantaneously through the Force. Even the most virulent nerve-toxins are not fatal more than a small percentage of the time, and then only when the afflicted Jedi Master is otherwise distracted or weakened."

"The explosion was not sufficient distraction?"

"For a Jedi who has advanced to Council level? I would say not."

She was mulling something over, he could tell. Eventually she appeared to reach the decision that telling him what she knew couldn't hurt. "The poison seems to have been . . . specifically engineered to kill the Force sensitive. The first thing it does is contaminate the midichlorians that live within a living being's cells, effectively cutting them off from the Force."

The answer left him numb with shock.

In his minds eye he saw Master Quillar, pawing feebly at the environment barrier as his skin dissolved, leaving bloody handprints behind. Suddenly his heart was thudding at the implications. "Have you sourced the poison?"

"Not yet."

"Do it. Do it as a matter of urgency."

"It will lead us to her?" Dodonna sounded sceptical.

"It had to have been manufactured especially for the purpose, and it surely wasn't a simple thing to do. As far as I know, it's not the kind of substance you can just pick up off the shelf of your local Czerka store. At the least it will lead you somewhere, and unless I'm mistaken somewhere is a damn sight better than where we all are now."

She nodded grimly. "They found trace levels of the poison's constituents in your quarters. As far as the investigators are concerned the poison was something of your invention – a further indictment of your guilt."

He grunted. It figured.

"That could have been planted easily enough. The comm. logs are far harder to explain away; Sith encrypted tightbeams, both sent and received in your name. Perceived wisdom says those logs cannot be faked."

Whoever the perceived wisdom belonged to, they'd obviously never encountered T3, he thought wryly. "Yet you're talking to me now, so you obviously don't believe them."

"My hunch," she said softly. Then: "I'll see what I can do for you."

He got the sense that the conversation had come to an end. "Thank you Admiral, but don't waste time on my account. There are more important matters at stake."

Dodonna's steely eyes seemed to almost contain pity. "The senate are pressing for a speedy resolution. You're in trouble, Tamar. The investigation isn't looking beyond the obvious answers, and a political consensus is forming against you. You need all the help you can get."

That news was hardly a surprise, no more or less than he had expected.

He wanted to ask about Yuthura, and what had happened to her – whether she had gotten away or not. It had been nagging at him almost as much as the other _her_; as Bastila too. Three women, who between them – albeit for very different reasons – left him in a state of torment that all the calming techniques and meditation in the galaxy could not abate.

But their words were no doubt being recorded, admiral of the fleet or no, so he simply offered a salute. She returned it smartly.

He kept silent as she started to walk away.

Abruptly everything went dark. He sensed Dodonna's shock, and felt a measure of his own in turn. The force field closing off his cell flickered and cut out. Then his control collar made a soft clicking noise and fell off.

Alarms blared out stridently.

-s-s-

"Observation: if that does not persuade them that their security has been breached, then I do not know what will."

T3 simply trilled and whistled in satisfaction by way of response.

-s-s-

A barren system on the outer rim, so isolated and insignificant that it was still known by its galactic designation number – M4107 – rather than a name. For once, perhaps for the first time in its oh so mundane history, it was the scene of significant events.

The space battle slowly petered out.

A sleek Sith capital ship – one of the Rakatan designed vessels created by the Star Forge – broke off from the edge of the asteroid field amid blazing bursts of turbolasers, assaulted by a wave of republic fighters that swarmed about it like gnats.

Shields flaring under constant assault, the Sith ship spewed photon mines in its wake, its engines blazing white-hot as it accelerated smoothly. The republic fighters broke off their attack as it made the leap to hyperspace and vanished.

It was over. Stillness replaced the fury.

Bastila didn't withdraw her concentration straight away, for all her weariness. Instead, she forced herself to linger over the battlefield: the asteroids with their shattered gun emplacements and missile nests – the wreckage of fighters and pirate gunboats.

The floating hulk of a light transport had been sliced open by turbolaser fire, then crumpled by a crunching impact with an asteroid, its hull ruptured and buckled. Now, as she silently observed through her minds eye, its reactors went critical, the transport exploding, killing the small number of pirate crew who were still alive on board.

She forced herself to experience every single death – bright, flaring pain that seared through her entire being before fading almost instantaneously to nothing – as if she was there on the ship, dying with them.

Eight republic capital ships with an average complement of 5000; seventeen gunships and 72 one and two man fighters. 40,276 lives. The toll of those extinguished when she had turned her battle meditation against the republic fleet on the Star Forge.

40,276. The number that was indelibly burnt through every fibre of her being. The number she would never allow herself to forget.

A Sith pilot, ejected from his destroyed fighter and floating helplessly, his oxygen tanks holed by micro-debris impact, died slowly and alone, starved of oxygen. She gasped as his life faded and she suffocated in sympathy, her lungs imploding along with his . . .

"Don't think I can't see what you're doing, princess."

Her startlingly blue eyes snapped open as the gruff voice intruded, her battle meditation cutting off as her consciousness snapped back into her body. A moment later, she flinched back, Canderous's grizzled granite visage looming large in front of her.

She blinked at him in surprise before her expression hardened abruptly. "I understand that you're part of this mission as an observer and advisor, Canderous. I think, however, that they intended you to observe our battles and tactics. Not me. In my quarters."

The Mandalorian shrugged his massive shoulders, entirely unperturbed by the icy glare she was directing his way. "The way I figure it, if you've seen a hundred and one asteroid field skirmishes you've pretty much seen the hundred and second too. There's only so much it can teach you. You on the other hand . . . watching you is a real education."

Her brows knitted together. "Quite frankly you disgust me."

He laughed harshly. "Oh, get a load of yourself. When you get to my age, you've seen enough in the way of beautiful women that one more or less doesn't make a blind bit of difference. You don't interest me at all. Not that way, anyway."

Bastila's jaw snapped shut, and she forced herself to be calmer; to be more like the Jedi Knight she was laughingly supposed to be, and not rise to the obvious provocation. She simply continued to glare at him coolly.

"Do you really think the dead care?" he asked after the silence had dragged on for several seconds.

"W-What?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, princess. I see it in your eyes. Does any part of you honestly believe that the dead care a damn whether you make yourself suffer on their behalf?"

She looked away from him, inwardly stunned. "If I'd wanted to talk about it with _you_ I'd have brought the subject up myself."

Suddenly he made a frustrated noise, sitting back. "Look Bastila, hard as you may find this to believe, I'm not trying to get at you here. Honestly."

"Right. You just want to help."

"I thought that – after what we've gone through together – there might be at least a little trust between us. I guess I was wrong, and yeah, that's probably my fault." Canderous seemed suddenly uncomfortable, groping for the sort of words that were totally alien to a veteran Mandalorian whose entire life had be war of one kind or another. "What I'm trying to say: you made a mistake – congratulations, welcome to the galaxy with all the rest of us poor, fallible idiots. You want to make up for it, right? Well you don't do that by reliving it and trying to make yourself suffer. You learn your lessons, and you up and move on."

Her lips twisted. "Well aren't you the font of all wisdom all of a sudden. Did you hit your head during the battle or something?"

He laughed again, a bass rumble like rolling thunder. "I'm wasting my breath here, aren't I? You're not going to take a blind bit of notice of me. Just one more question though. If that's alright with you."

"Spit it out then."

"What happens when you start to enjoy it?"

Bastila started to speak several times, but each time trailed off almost immediately with nothing said. Her jaw tightened. "Go away Canderous. You might mean well, but I'm not in the mood."

He nodded – took aim with one particularly barbed parting shot. "No wonder Revan felt he had to run away; that being tried and executed by those morons on the Republic Senate was preferable to living in the same galaxy as you."

"You're saying that's my fault?"

"I don't know. Is it?"

She said nothing, not even looking at him anymore.

"You've got that bond between the two of you," Canderous went on. "I don't pretend to understand it. Hell, I don't think I want to understand it. But when you make yourself feel the pains of the dying, do you think he feels it too?"

Before she could make any response – before she could even come up with anything remotely like a response in her head – the ship's intercom warbled. "Jedi Knight Bastila, this is Captain Organa. Might I request your presence on the bridge?"

-s-s-

A cover was drawn over Tamar's head, cutting off his vision.

It didn't cut off his sense of those around him though. In a way, it simply made it all the more acute. There were twenty-four Republic soldiers arranged in twin files, all of them armed and armoured as if prepared for battle. They were scared to a one; scared of him – Dark Lord of the Sith and the man who had single-handedly slain the Jedi Council.

Mixed in with the fear he could sense hate and anger, and from some a degree of curiosity.

_Not as impressive as the stories, am I_, he thought somewhat sourly. _I mean, I look almost like an ordinary man._

It was the fear that was dominant however.

The guard captain in charge of transporting him guided Tamar firmly back into to the transit chair. Even he was scared, Tamar sensed as he quiescently allowed himself to be manhandled, for all the iron hard surface he was trying to project. Restraints snapped tight about his wrists, his waist and his ankles, locking him tightly in place.

A moment later, there was a soft humming noise as a security field snapped on around him. Latent static in the air made his skin prickle. The chair wobbled slightly as it rose a couple of feet into the air on repulsors.

The disruption to his prison's security systems had frightened people badly. Tamar hadn't needed to be a Jedi to pick up on that one. So now, as a precaution, he was being transported to a new and theoretically more secure location.

He wondered, not for the first time, if he should mention that this was the perfect set-up for either an ambush or a rescue attempt. Like all the other times he kept silent however. No doubt they'd only assume he was trying to pull some kind of manipulation, however little logic said he had to gain from it.

The disruptor collar around his neck switched on. For a moment, he struggled against its effects instinctively, and saw that, yes he could indeed overcome its hold if he were willing to try hard enough. Body juddering, pain spiking through his skull as payment for his resistance, he forced himself to relax and surrender his will instead.

Everything around him was lost in a wave of buzzing delirium. He was just about aware enough to notice as they started moving.

-s-s-

"You sense it too, Bastila? A great disturbance in the Force?"

She nodded. It was impossible to miss now that she focused upon it; an angry, incoherent roaring that made her temples prickle and set her teeth on edge. It was almost surprising to her that no one else on the bridge could feel it, Force sensitive or not. "Yes Zikl, I sense it too."

Zikl was a Nautolan, a tall and rather imposing figure in his Jedi robes. He had pale green skin and big, glassy looking black eyes that gave him the appearance of a slightly startled warrior frog. His mass of sensory head tails were pulled back in a thick, intricate braiding that fell halfway down his back.

His sense of pleasure at her agreement managed to set her teeth on edge almost as much as the Force disturbance. In fact, his general air of deference to her had set her teeth on edge right throughout this damnable mission. He had been a Jedi Knight for over five years, and was generally well regarded in the Order, but still he insisted on deferring to her in almost every question or judgement. Indeed, he almost seemed to be awed by her – fabled possessor of Battle Meditation, and one of the saviours of the republic.

When the reality was she shouldn't be a Jedi Knight at all. Part of her doubted whether she should even be a Padawan.

After the Star Forge Bastila had expected punishment; rebuke and penance; opprobrium and revulsion. Instead, she'd been treated as just as much a hero as all of her companions – cheered, applauded and congratulated for a job well done. She had stood before the Council, head bowed in shame, awaiting judgment. And they had promoted her to Jedi Knight.

No mention at all of the 40,276.

And all the while that she was notionally a hero, Tamar De'Nolo had been caught in the centre of a storm of ever intensifying recrimination, target for the hate that should rightfully have been hers. It was difficult to blame him for wanting shot of her.

_Trust in the Council's wisdom_, she told herself silently. For the several hundredth time. It felt like an empty mantra, particularly now that so many of the Council were dead.

When she'd first felt the distant, apocalyptic ripples in the Force and heard the newscasts she'd wanted to order their taskforce turned around that instant. When later news spoke of Tamar's arrest – Darth Revan's arrest – in connection to the atrocity that urge had increased a hundredfold. But running blindly back to Coruscant and abandoning her posting was not going to make things better. There was no magic wand she could wave and make things right when she got there.

In fact, given her record as far as Tamar was concerned, she would probably just make things worse.

Despite that the urge to open up the link again, and let down her guard, remained insistent – especially in the quiet times when she was alone. But no, that way was weakness, and she must remain strong for both their sakes. Eventually, if they resisted it for long enough, the link would fade and die. They would finally be free of each other and able to get on with their respective lives again.

She gritted her teeth and forced her attention to the here and now. Her duties.

An asteroid loomed large in the _Starlight Phoenix's_ main viewport, just under a kilometre in diameter. Gun and missile blisters sprouted from the iron grey rock, all of them scorched and battered by Sith turbolaser fire, disabled or entirely destroyed. A landing bay stood open to hard vacuum in front of them.

And somewhere inside was the source of this strange Force disturbance.

"It's the same location that the distress call we received originated from," Captain Rafe Organa said from beside her. A hard, authoritative looking Alderanian in his late forties, his close-cropped dark hair was starting to show signs of grey. "It cut off about fifteen minutes ago."

"A pirate base," Canderous put in. "Pathetic scum. You're well rid of them."

"Some might say the same about Mandalorians," Captain Organa commented dryly. "Not me of course."

Canderous favoured the captain with a long, steady look. "Of course."

Bastila stifled a sigh. _Not again_. "Whatever the Sith were looking for, they were obviously looking for it in there. And I very much doubt they were so far from their own territories just to squash a few pirates. I want a boarding party put together as soon as possible, Captain."

"Right away, Jedi Bastila."

She nodded. "Good. I will be leading it."

"Um, are you sure that's wise?" From Captain Organa's slight delay in replying, she got the distinct impression that she was receiving the politeness-edited version of his preferred response.

"There is an obvious disruption to the Force present here, Captain. A Jedi has to be part of any landing party. Jedi Zikl holds seniority on this mission, so will remain behind to perform any requisite command duties. Therefore, by process of elimination, I must accompany the landing party." If the Nautolan was going to persist in being deferential then she was damn well going to take advantage of it. Never again was she going to let herself become the republic's walking Battle Meditation in a can: taken out and used as necessary, then carefully wrapped up in cotton wool and put away until she was needed once more.

"As you say, Jedi Bastila." There was a tiny flicker of amused acknowledgement in the captain's eyes.

"So that's settled," Canderous butted in. "Good. I could do with stretching my legs."

Both Bastila and Captain Organa snapped their attention back to the Mandalorian.

"You are on this ship as observer and advisor, given your extensive knowledge of this particular region of space . . ." Captain Organa hesitated in obvious distaste, before finally bringing himself to pronounce the honorary title Canderous had received after the Star Forge battle. " . . . General. Observers do not, as a rule, accompany away missions."

Canderous sneered. "I'm not going to be doing much observing through a hundred feet of solid rock, am I? This is what I do, Captain. Maybe you Republic boys can watch and learn something."

Bastila started to say something, but the look in Canderous's eyes said that they could have a discussion she definitely didn't want to have in front of Zikl if she pushed matters.

"He comes," she stated simply instead.

-s-s-

Senator Oris Gallavon had a headache.

He winced at the stabbing sensation driving through his brow, and almost fumbled the key card to his apartment. Leaning against the doorframe to support himself, his breath came in shallow gasps. Little tremors passed constantly through his flesh and his face looked grey and greasy beneath a sheen of sweat.

He always seemed to have a headache these days. Stress, he supposed. He was under a lot of stress. But he'd never used to get them before . . . before . . .. The headache abruptly got worse, so intense that it blotted out all thought.

When it subsided, he found that he was standing in the middle of the apartment, the door closed behind him. He had no memory at all of any intervening steps.

She was there, waiting for him.

His wife.

They'd said that she was dead, killed nearly five years ago in Darth Malak's brutal scorching of Telos. He'd never believed that though. No one had ever found a body, so he'd never allowed himself to give up hope. His friends had all been so worried about him, so he'd pretended to move on and accept her death, but in his heart, he'd always known that she would come back to him one day.

_His Maura. So full of life . . ._

And in the end, he'd been proven right. Just sixth months ago, he'd woken up and found her, standing in the middle of his apartment, like she'd never been away. Like she was now.

She was so beautiful. To his eyes, she seemed almost to glow, bathed by gentle golden light. The smile she favoured him with filled his heart with contented joy, making the stress seem bearable – worth it even.

She had a drink poured, waiting for him. He took it from her hand with a smile as he half-collapsed into his favourite chair.

"How is the bill coming along, my dearest?" Her voice was gently bubbling music, and it made the pain in his skull melt far, far away. How he loved just to sit back and listen to that voice, letting its tones and timbres wash over him, soothing and guiding his thoughts . . .

"It is drafted." He took a pull from the glass, savouring the burn of it in his throat. "We present it tomorrow. Initial soundings suggest we'll only get a bare majority on first reading, but on a second reading it will pass."

"That is wonderful darling." Her fingertips trailed across his shoulder.

"Yes . . . yes . . ."

"I sense doubt." There was concern in her voice. The concern made him hurt again, his skull throbbing.

"I . . ." He frowned. "I don't know. I have been working on it so long, and I know it is for the best. You told me it was for the best. But . . .."

"How can you question, darling?" Her voice became slightly sterner than its usual gentle aural caress. It made him want to weep and beg forgiveness. "The Jedi order has pulled the Republic's strings for far too long now, and all they have ever guided us to is disaster and death. Telos would still be intact if it wasn't for their lack of judgement. We would never have had to go through all that we did, but for them. They hold themselves aloof from the tenets of democracy and pay only lip service to our laws, even sheltering the Dark Lord Revan from deserved justice. And if they are too enfeebled to protect their own Council, how can they claim to guide and advise us wisely?"

He nodded slowly. It made sense. She always made sense.

"It is for the galactic good that they must be removed from their lofty position of influence, and made publicly accountable to us – the people who they claim to serve."

"If you say so, my love."

"I do say so. History will celebrate what you do this day."

He took another swig from his drink. To be honest history could go hang. As long as he still had her smile and her heart, nothing else truly mattered.

He looked at her yearningly. "When can I tell people about you, my love? When can I stop keeping your return a secret? I don't know how long I can keep up this pretence."

"Soon, Oris." She smiled, and he felt the pain in his head fade again to a blissful golden daze. "Very soon now."

-s-s-

Bastila eased the helmet of her space suit off, and tentatively breathed in. The air tasted stale, but as the sensors had indicated, it was breathable.

She looked around the cargo hold carefully. The main generators had failed at some point during the Sith's assault on the asteroid base, and the back-up lighting bathed everything in dim and bloody shades of red. It left deep and ominous pools of shadow behind, giving the impression that almost anything could be lurking, just out of view.

Everything was a shambles, showing obvious signs of an intense firefight having taken place as a Sith boarding party passed through. Transport crates had been tipped over and smashed open, their contents – rations; spare parts; medical supplies; what looked like packets of spice – scattered hither and thither across the deck.

She tried to probe deeper into the station with the Force, to see if there was anyone still alive on board, but the Force disturbance made that impossible. Up close, it was even worse than she'd felt from the _Starlight Phoenix's_ bridge – a maddening buzzing distortion that made her skin crawl. It was like nothing she'd experienced before, and whispered to her quietly of delirium and blood lust – pure insanity.

She gripped the hilt of her double-bladed lightsaber more tightly.

Canderous and the four Republic soldiers that made up the remainder of their squad had fanned out to create a perimeter. Canderous's voice came to her over her earpiece. He was all business now, titanium hard and professional. "Over here. You'll want to take a look at this."

He'd found a pair of bodies amid the scattered crates. From the shabby, patchwork nature of their flightsuits they were pirates. Both bore telltale wounds.

The first – a Rodian – had been cleft from right shoulder through to left hip, both halves neatly cauterised. The second body's right arm had been neatly severed from the shoulder, his skull bearing a misshapen look, as though staved in by a heavy boot.

"Dark Jedi," she stated grimly, pulling her gaze away from the gruesome sight.

"Looks like it. They the cause of this disturbance you're feeling?"

"It would appear so, wouldn't it?" Bastila frowned as she spoke though. What she could feel wasn't the darkside in any traditional sense.

"Can you tell if there're any of them left behind?"

"No," she answered succinctly. The Force disturbance left her unable to determine anything much at all beyond what her eyes and ears were already telling her.

"Good to know," was Canderous's sour response.

"I doubt the Sith would abandon Dark Jedi. Normal troops maybe, but it was an orderly withdrawal and not a cut and run."

Canderous grunted, then radioed back to the _Starlight Phoenix_. "Captain, I want a full spectrum sweep of this entire asteroid field. The Sith might have left us some kind of surprise."

"Will do. Captain Organa out." The normal animosity that existed between the two men was, for the moment, put on hold. Both were career soldiers, and knew exactly how it went.

Aside from the bodies, the hold contained nothing else amid all the wreckage and junk to indicate what the Sith might have been after. They advanced cautiously deeper into the complex.

As they walked, Bastila could feel her stomach lurching as though with nausea. It seemed that the artificial gravity generators weren't operating at full efficiency, leaving strange and disorienting patches of variance. Along with the red light, and the humming madness tainting the Force, it combined to give a bizarre sense of walking through a demented fever dream.

The Force gave her only the briefest flash of warnings, and she yelled out to the others.

A pair of doors whirred open in front of them. Behind the doors, waiting, were a pair of Sith heavy assault droids, clothed in translucent red energy shields. Immediately they attacked with a hail of blaster fire.

Bastila's lightsaber was already ignited, twin yellow blades whirling, catching and deflecting the blaster bolts as the Force flowed through her. She had to scramble backwards as the volume of incoming fire intensified, growing beyond her ability to hold off, and she dove for the cover of a pile of relatively intact transport crates.

Intelligent enough to recognise a Jedi as the most serious threat, the droids both came after her to the exclusion of the others. They moved rapidly forwards in an effort to take her cover out of the equation and catch her in a deadly crossfire.

She heard the whining cough of Canderous's heavy repeater, returning fire, but the droids' shields held firm against it. The Republic soldiers' lighter carbines proved even less effective. Cursing beneath her breath, she ducked further back. A blaster shot cracked through the space her head had been occupying a scant instant before.

Using the Force, she picked up one of the nearby crates and hurled it at the closest droid, more as a distraction than a serious attempt to do damage. Its blasters snapped round instantly, ripping the crate to shreds before it could hit home.

Canderous used the brief distraction to roll an ion grenade right up beneath it, the flashing detonation wiping out its shields and interfering with its circuitry to leave it reeling like a drunk at closing time. Bastila reacted quickest, hurling her lightsaber and carefully guiding its spinning blades to slice through the assault droid's armour, severing the reinforced cables that connected to its main power supply.

It collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, giving off a rather pathetic shower of sparks and a puff of greasy smoke.

The second droid, deprived of its partner, didn't last long. As Bastila hurled crate after crate at it to keep its attention, its shields slowly withered and died beneath a sustained crossfire from Canderous and the Republic troops. When they'd gone entirely she stepped up to finish it off with deft close-in saber work whilst it was struggling to decide upon a target.

"Almost like old times," Canderous said quietly as he passed her.

She almost smiled at that, but the urge died very quickly. Old times meant Tamar would have been here with them, fighting at their sides instead of languishing in a prison cell on Coruscant.

-s-s-

The violent shudder that passed through the armoured transport shuttle was enough to penetrate even through a neural-disrupter induced daze. Dimly Tamar was aware of someone shouting panicked orders from somewhere close by, though his brain was unable to process anything as intricate as actual words.

He tried to concentrate – to focus, and send orders to his body – but it was so much easier and more comfortable just to keep on drifting . . .

There was another shudder, accompanied by a grinding sound. A short time later, there was a sensation of cool air flowing around him. It didn't do much to shake the lethargy, even though he knew deep down that he had to act.

More shouting followed from somewhere close by. It trailed off abruptly. There were a number of muffled thuds. Suddenly Tamar tilted at an odd angle to the vertical. His vision swirled in strange patterns, his brain unable to process what he was seeing. The small part of him still capable of coherent thought cried out that he had to bloody well do something _right now_.

Screaming inwardly from the effort – though no external change occurred – he Forced himself to focus and struggled to make his body react to his commands. His fingertips twitched and curled spasmodically and sweat trickled down his face. The effort filled his skull with a wall of buzzing pain that wiped out everything else.

There was a flicker of Force somewhere close by. He seized upon it desperately, gripping it tight – a drowning man grasping at floating wreckage – and drew it greedily into himself.

It was like a dam bursting. As soon as the first trickle of Force filtered into him, a whole flood followed in its wake. Suddenly the pain and delirium were pushed into the background, and he could feel his body again. His thoughts were still tainted by a buzzing sensation like bad tinnitus, but they were at least approximately functional.

Wind was howling all around him. He tried to move – to stand up – but his restraints made that impossible.

He jolted as a pale face swam into focus above him, gleaming yellow eyes inches away from his. "Yuthura . . ." his voice came out as a dry rasp.

"Steady," she told him, leaning very close indeed as she reached around behind him. There was a quiet snapping sound and abruptly the restraints retracted. Then the collar itself came off. "There."

Tamar lurched to his feet, stumbling as the deck shifted. Yuthura caught his arm to steady him. He bit back the flood of questions that rose up, knowing that it was neither the time nor place.

The back of the shuttle had been opened and the boarding ramp lowered, which was the cause of the wildly rushing air. They were obviously still in mid-flight. Looking around he could see the soldiers that had formed his escort lying in crumbled heaps. Strangely, the feeling he got from their minds indicated that they were all sleeping peacefully, uninjured.

Jolee Bindo was standing in the middle of them, an odd-looking metal circlet at his brow, arms spread in a stance that resembled a halfway comical parody of a martial arts master about to pounce.

Jolee became aware of the scrutiny. "Don't just stand there gawping. This is a jailbreak. Not a friendly visit for tea and cakes. The pilot might be thinking happy thoughts right now, but I've no idea how long that's going to last."

Wind buffeted him hard in the face as he walked out along the shuttle's tail ramp with Yuthura. Below them he could see a thick carpet of white and grey cloud rushing by, the tips of Coruscant's tallest skyscrapers protruding, resembling floating islands. A bulky freighter – certainly not the _Ebon Hawk_ he'd been halfway expecting to see – had latched onto the shuttle with boarding cables and was flying about twenty feet behind, its own front cargo bay doors gaping wide.

Measuring the gap and taking a deep breath, Tamar Force-jumped, rolling as he landed. Yuthura and Jolee followed close behind.

"Okay, we're clear," Yuthura was saying as she hit the controls to withdraw the boarding cables and close the cargo-bay doors.

To Tamar's surprise, it was Carth Onasi's voice that answered over the intercom. "Then I suggest you hold on tight, boys and girls. Things may be about to get a little rough."

-s-s-

The attack came almost without warning.

One moment Bastila was advancing slowly and carefully along the blood-hued corridor; extending little feelers and tendrils of the Force ahead of her in an effort to detect any further ambushes or booby traps that the Sith might have left behind. The next she had the sense of the ever-present Force disturbance rushing towards them like a vast tidal wave.

She barely managed to utter a warning before they were beset. They came at them on all fours, snarling and slavering as they rushed at them down the corridor, pouring from open doors and even from the ventilation shafts.

In front of her Canderous opened fire, the incandescent energy that his heavy repeater spat making flesh char and sizzle, but scarcely seeming to slow their attackers' advance. Bastila tried to use the Force to grasp and hold them in their tracks, but it was like trying to grab a bar of wet soap with a slippery hand. One of the republic soldiers cried out in alarm as something dropped on top of him from the ceiling, tearing at him with snarling teeth.

Bastila's lightsaber moved in fast diagonal slashes.

A head was severed. Another one of the attackers fell back, half-growling, half-whimpering, an arm lopped off near the shoulder. The third she impaled through the chest, though its weight and momentum barrelled on through her guard, sending her sprawling backwards and pinning her to the deck beneath its dead weight.

As she struggled to free herself, she was dimly aware that Canderous had switched from his blaster to the Baragwin assault blade he carried for close quarters work, laying about himself with controlled fury, flesh and bone crunching as he sliced his way through it. The republic troops continued to lay down a heavy barrage of blaster fire from behind.

Finally everything was still and quiet again. The howls and snarls and low, slavering growls had ceased.

Less than ten seconds, all told. Bastila was gulping air, as much from shock as exertion, as she regained her feet.

For the first time, she managed to get a proper look at their assailants. There were eight corpses – it had seemed much more whilst they were under attack – strewn along the corridor, hacked and scorched. She was stunned to see that some of them were human. Amongst the others, she picked out a trio of Weequays and a Rodian.

A moment ago, they had seemed more like a pack of ravenous kath hounds or firaxa sharks in a feeding frenzy.

The one whose arm she'd severed was still alive, cowering back against the wall, growling deep inside its chest. Her chest; she was a human, stocky and crew-cut, her face smeared in sweat and engine grease. Her expression was purely bestial, no hint of humanity remaining.

Bastila held up a hand to stay Canderous from using his blood-splattered blade to finish her off, taking a cautious step forward. The woman snarled, baring her teeth. Bloody saliva drooled in a long string from the corner of her mouth.

The Force distortion that she and Zikl had sensed earlier on hung around the woman like a miasma.

Tentatively, Bastila used the Force to gently probe at her, trying to both calm and sooth mentally, easing any physical pain. Abruptly her eyes widened, a tiny shocked note merging from her throat.

The Force disturbance wasn't just clinging to the woman; it was originating from her too. Her conscious mind had been torn apart by some kind of shatteringly brutal Force assault, leaving only the id intact. The after effects of that assault lingered, the roaring rage and madness – which was all that was left of the woman's consciousness – spilling over to taint everything around her like a disease in the Force itself.

Up close, the absolute hideousness of what had been done to her was near overwhelming. For a moment or two, Bastila had to struggle to prevent herself wretching.

She was still off guard when the woman stopped growling and flung herself at her, teeth snapping.

Canderous's blade flashed in front of her and the woman fell back, very nearly sundered in two. Blood spread out in a miniature red lake around her.

Their eyes met briefly. Bastila waited in anticipation of some scathingly sarcastic rebuke from the veteran Mandalorian. None was forthcoming though. Instead, he simply looked down at the woman's corpse, and she wondered briefly if she imagined the slight shudder that passed through his heavily armoured shoulders. "What the hell happened to them?" he asked.

Something the Sith had done, obviously. She knew only too well that the dark side of the Force could be used to do terrible things to a person's mind, but this – this utter destruction and raving insanity – was something beyond her experience. "I . . . I don't know."

She could still feel the Force disturbance up ahead, deeper inside the asteroid, diminished only slightly in its intensity. "But whatever it was there are more of them up ahead. And there are a lot."

-s-s-

Tamar slid into the co-pilot seat beside Carth, strapping himself in.

"Nice of you to join us. Didn't feel right without you along, somehow," Carth said dryly.

Tamar looked at the pilot sidelong: still the same rugged good looks and untamed three-day stubble growth, but even in this situation there was an air about him that suggested he was much more at peace with himself than when they'd last parted. A part of him wanted to ask if he had any idea what they'd just done, but as their eyes met briefly he saw that Carth already knew exactly.

Instead, he said lightly. "Yuthura and Jolee made me an invitation. It would have been impolite to refuse."

"Yeah, I can see how you wouldn't want to be impolite." Carth's attention snapped back to the controls and the view of Coruscant's ionosphere as they continued their rapid ascent out of the Republic Capital's atmosphere.

"Thanks," Tamar said after a second or so.

Carth just grunted. "You're bloody furious, aren't you? I can tell."

Tamar weighed up his answer carefully. "Well, I have been wondering what the hell you were all thinking. But overall, I think I'm pretty calm right now. Bloody furious will probably come later."

Carth glanced down at some of the readouts and muttered something barely audible that contained the words '. . . heap of junk.' Then his gaze flicked back to Tamar. "We all talked it through very carefully, and we all understand the implications and the likely consequences of what we're doing. Sometimes though you just can't sit back and do nothing while someone you love makes a terrible, terrible mistake.

"I'm talking about the Republic by the way. Just in case those big manly feelings of yours were, y'know, getting embarrassed."

Tamar managed a slightly strained chuckle.

"Like the outfit by the way. Suits you."

"Yeah, prison's liberating somehow. I never thought I could pull off fluorescent orange and aqua before, but now I see how wrong I was."

The radar display was showing six small arrows closing in on them fast – republic fighters. "Company," Tamar warned.

Carth had already noticed. "I'd been expecting them before now to be honest. T3's diversion worked better than I'd thought."

The comm. crackled. "Freighter _Kessell Run_, this is red wing Captain Terlov. In accordance with Republic flight regulation . . ."

Expression tight, Carth flicked the comm. off. "I don't know about you, but I'm getting bored by that guy already." Despite the flippant tone, Tamar could feel the turmoil within Carth as he fought against his every ingrained instinct as a loyal Republic officer.

A warning shot blazed across their bows.

"Useless pile of . . .. This would have been so much easier in the _Hawk_," Carth muttered beneath his breath. "I'm starting to wish I'd never given it to Mission."

Tamar wondered briefly if he'd misheard. "You gave the _Hawk_ to Mission?"

"Yeah, she's a good pilot. Learnt all I had to teach her real fast. D'you think we could not have this conversation right now?"

A jolt passed through the freighter as a turbolaser blast hit their shields and scattered harmlessly. Several more shots missed narrowly, making the hull vibrate as shockwaves passed through the thin air.

"I just hope that, when she's running the biggest smuggling operation in the galaxy, you'll look back at that decision and reflect upon it carefully."

Carth's attempted evasive manoeuvres didn't seem to have much effect, the freighter having all the agility of a drunken Hutt. The _Run_ part of its name certainly seemed to have been inspired by wishful thinking rather than reality. Two more turbolaser blasts juddered through their shields and there were several more close misses.

"Shields at seventy percent and falling," Tamar read off.

"Blast it!" Expression grimly fixed, Carth flicked a series of switches. "Okay, I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but time for the bomb." His finger stabbed at a red button.

A few seconds later the radar display blotted out in a haze of static, and the instruments in front of them went haywire, readings spinning wildly. The entire freighter shuddered and lurched violently, throwing Tamar around in his seat.

The radar screen flickered, then came on again. There was no sign of the fighter formation on the display, and no more turbolaser blasts came after them. The rest of the instruments normalised slightly and their flight levelled out.

They'd cleared Coruscant's atmosphere.

"Ion pulse mine." Carth explained. "They . . . they should have plenty of time to either regain control or eject." By his expression, Tamar could see Carth knew that he'd just crossed a line that he'd hoped fervently never to have to come within touching distance of.

"They'll be more of them."

"In five minutes it won't matter. We'll be far enough out of Coruscant's gravity well that we can make the leap to hyperspace."

They settled back.

"Sorry to get you involved in this," Tamar said after a while.

"Don't mention it. This was my choice, not yours." Carth smiled crookedly, though Tamar knew him well enough to be able to tell it was more than slightly forced. "Besides, it was all getting a bit dull. I don't think anyone has tried to kill me for at least six months."

"Six months?" There was a slightly puzzled note in Tamar's response. "But it's been eight since . . ."

"Don't ask. _Really_, don't ask."

Tamar's belated answering smile was equally as forced as Carth's. "Well, anyway. Welcome back into the disaster area that is my life."

"Glad to be . . ."

Carth trailed off abruptly. Directly in front of them a Republic heavy battle frigate had just cut out of hyperspace, looming massively. "Damn it, they must want us _real_ bad to try a manoeuvre like that." He wrestled with the controls. "Bloody hotshot starship captains. In my day you'd have been court-martialled for pulling anything like that so close to a populated world."

He tried to take evasive action, but a violent judder passed through the _Kessell Run's _hull – a tractor beam locking onto them.

Carth attempted to break the lock for a few seconds longer, engines straining, gages going far into the red zones, but it was no use. They were well and truly caught. After a moment or two more, Carth released the controls and sat back in his seat with a deep exhalation.

Surprisingly Tamar didn't detect any huge amount of concern from him. "I've learned a few tricks since the _Leviathan_," was all he said cryptically when he noticed the look Tamar was directing his way.

Abruptly he leaned forward again, hitting the control to the internal intercom. "Okay everyone, let's make our way to the aft cargo hold like we discussed." Then to Tamar: "Trust me. This'll work. There's no time for long explanations. Or even short ones, come to that."

Tamar just nodded.

"I'll need you help on this part." Carth was reaching down between his legs, pulling up a panel from the floor. "There's a matching panel beneath you. Yep, that's the one. Open it. Good." He yanked a lever up, grunting at the effort it required, and indicated that Tamar should do the same.

"I'm going to set the counter to three minutes. Flip that cover up like so, and on a count of three push that big button there. That'll initiate the self-destruct sequence."

The self-destruct . . .?" Tamar started, but cut himself off and simply nodded instead.

"One . . . Two . . . Three . . ." They pushed their respective buttons simultaneously. Immediately alarms started to blare, lights flashing in epilepsy inducing patterns for anyone who didn't get the message.

"One eighty," a coolly artificial female voice started to count down. "One seventy-nine."

Together they ran through the _Kessell Run's_ corridors as the alarms continued to blare out. The freighter managed to seem much bigger to Tamar on the outward journey than it had on the way in.

"Eighty-three," the voice was saying as they skidded together rounded the corner into the aft cargo hold.

A sleekly gleaming yacht was there waiting, taking up almost all the available space. Tamar stopped and gaped at it. On its brilliantly polished hull was a single name, _Morgana_.

"It's just a toy really. Something me and Dustil started renovating together. There's still a bit of work to do, but its hyperspace capable and goes like stink. Now get a move on."

As they sprinted up the entrance ramp, the others – Yuthura, Jolee and the two droids – were already waiting and strapped in. Carth slid into the pilot's seat and began to hurry through the launch sequence. "Sixty-seven . . ."

The cargo bay doors retracted painfully slowly, opening the hold to vacuum as the yacht's engines fired up.

"Thirty-six . . ." Tamar felt himself holding his breath.

"C'mon, c'mon," Carth muttered. The yacht rose up on the its repulsors and started to glide smoothly forwards.

"Twenty-two . . ."

Sweat trickled down the side of Carth's brow. "Should've allowed for an extra twenty seconds." He gritted his teeth, fingers drumming impatiently.

"Ten . . . Nine . . ."

Then they were free of the hold, and Carth brought the thrusters smoothly to max. Tamar felt like he'd been kicked in the back by an angry ronto, slamming back hard into his seat, the skin of his face pulled tight. Over his shoulder, he could hear Jolee muttering distinctly unflattering suggestions about Carth's parentage . . .

The _Kessell Run_ exploded behind them in a brilliant flash, the debris cloud blocking off any attempt by the Republic frigate to get another tractor-beam lock on them. Fighters were being scrambled from its launch bays, but it was far, far too late to make a difference.

The backdrop of stars became blazing lines as they made it to hyperspace and away.

-s-s-

Canderous activated the thermal detonator, rolled it through the door, and slammed it shut. One of the chasing horde of the mind-burnt crashed into the door hard enough to make it shake, snarling and growling with berserker insanity.

A three count later, the thermal detonator went off.

The sound it made was a surprisingly restrained low _crump_. There was an ear-popping change in air pressure, and the metal door buckled outwards but just about held. It looked as if a gigantic fist had tried to punch its way through, the imprint of it making the metal bulge permanently outwards.

Afterwards everything was quiet, the only sounds their own breathing and the ambient background hum of the air scrubbers. Finally, after the frantic running battle of the past ten minutes, they were able to pause for a moment.

Breath coming in shallow, thready gasps, one of the Republic soldiers staggered and slumped against the wall. He left a smearing trail of blood behind as he slid to the deck.

Bastila crossed quickly to him, probing carefully at the half-detached shoulder plate of his armour. There were a series of rather gruesome bite marks at the juncture of his neck and left shoulder, and they were bleeding copiously. She judged that they probably came from a Weequay, though from the savagery with which his flesh had been torn it more resembled a mauling from an attack dog.

"Am I . . . am I . . . infected?"

"What?" Bastila began to channel Force into the wounds, trying to staunch the bleeding and start the flesh knitting back together. She judged that the man was sliding into shock as the adrenaline that had kept him going up to this point slowly faded. "No. This isn't any kind of disease or infection. Someone used the Force to do this to these poor people."

Although, come to think of it, the victims did bear a remarkable resemblance to Tarisian Rakghouls – in behaviour if not looks.

Slowly the man's breathing deepened and steadied, the bleeding slowing and finally stopping. His eyes looked a lot clearer as they blinked and focussed on her face. "You should be okay for now, but report to the infirmary as soon as we get back to the _Phoenix,_" she told him.

"Do you sense any more of those blasted things?" Canderous's voice interrupted.

"Not . . . close." The sense of the Force disturbance was greatly diminished from its initial levels, although it was still present, nagging on the peripheries of her awareness. "But there are some still left."

Canderous just grunted. "We made it to the control centre. For what it's worth." His voice came from about ten yards away now, outside of her range of vision. She heard him kick something. "Looks like there was some kind of a stand-off. The pirates took out a couple of Sith-troopers. And what do we have here? Ah yes . . . a Dark Jedi. Back of her skull's missing. Lot of good the Force did her."

Bastila stood up and moved to join him.

The control room was an absolute shambles. Every single control terminal and computer console had been systematically destroyed by a combination of blaster fire and explosives. The resultant destruction was so thorough that it couldn't have been the purely random result of a heavy firefight. Some of the terminals still sparked every now and again.

Among the wreckage, she could see the bodies that Canderous had mentioned. Mixed in with the Sith she counted six dead pirates.

"What do you think the Sith were looking for?" Canderous asked as he glanced back at her. "On the face of it this is hardly a productive use of their resources."

She picked her way carefully through the debris. "Perhaps the pirates chose to hijack the wrong shipment. Something too valuable to simply blast from space."

"Maybe." The Mandalorian was sorting through some debris stacked against the control room's back wall. He picked up a heavy plate of badly scorched metal, brushing it off. "You heard of a ship called the _Flying Kuat?_"

"There must be billions of ships in the galaxy, Canderous. How many of them do you think I know personally? I'm not a bloody spaceport mechanic."

"No need to bite my head of, girl. I was just wondering, seeing how this here seems to indicate that its home port was Ossus."

"What?" She hurried quickly to his side. "Let me take a look at that."

Ossus had once been the home of the main Jedi libraries and archives, before the planet's surface was incinerated by the shockwave from the Cron Drift supernova during the Great Sith War. The Jedi had returned and rebuilt to an extent, but nothing approaching the former glory.

"So, have you heard of the _Flying Kuat_ now?"

"I . . . I think it might be familiar somehow. I'm not . . . entirely sure."

"You think? You're not entirely sure? This is the fabled Jedi wisdom and decisiveness, is it? Well I have to say it's truly a privilege to witness." Sarcasm dripped.

"Oh, stop your yapping. You're hardly helping matters." Abruptly she touched her earpiece, opening a comm. channel to the _Starlight Phoenix's_ bridge. "Jedi Zikl," she said with calm authority. "I believe your master originally came from Ossus, did he not?"

There was a crackle of static before the Nautolan's voice answered her, deferentially polite as always. "Yes indeed, Jedi Bastila. Master Voth Ban-Jeric. A truly wise and great man . . ."

She cut him off, not having much the inclination right then to listen to another eulogy to Zikl's beloved and sadly departed master. "General Ordo has discovered hull fragments from a ship that seems to have originated from Ossus. Its name is the _Flying Kuat_. That seems familiar to me somehow, but I can't quite place it. I was wondering if you might know anything more?"

"Er . . . You said, the_ Flying Kuat_?"

"Yes, I did."

"I just wanted to be sure that I hadn't misheard you," he ummed.

_Out with it then_, she was half-inclined to snap, but managed to get a hold on her impatience and wait for him to go on.

"As I recollect the _Flying Kuat_ was one of the ships used to evacuate important Jedi artefacts from the Great Libraries prior to Ossus's tragic loss. If I remember the story correctly though, the _Flying Kuat_ never reached its destination on Coruscant, and all the artefacts that it carried were assumed to be lost in space."

Bastila developed an ominous sinking feeling deep inside as she listened.

"I believe there was quite some consternation among the ranks of Jedi Order for a time after that. They feared greatly that some of the artefacts the _Flying Kuat_ carried might have fallen into Sith hands, where they might have been used to do great damage. Thankfully that proved not be case. There was never, to my knowledge, any indication of the missing artefacts ever turning up, or being used for malevolent purposes.

"Ah yes . . . Oh." Realisation dawned in the Jedi Knight's voice. Bastila heard a gulping noise as Zikl trailed off to silence.

_Ah yes_, indeed.

-s-s-

The pleasure yacht _Morgana_ made the next in its series of pre-programmed hyperspace leaps, designed to evade anyone trying to read and follow their hyperspace vectors.

Tamar eased himself into a seat around the table in the yacht's cramped leisure area. The ship had been designed to accommodate up to a maximum of four people on short intersystem jaunts, so with himself, Carth, Jolee, Yuthura, HK-47 and T3 it was something of a tight fit.

His gaze travelled around at the others.

Opposite him, Yuthura looked pensive and uncomfortable. Her headtails shifted and rearranged themselves on her shoulders every now and then, while one arm bore a lightweight translucent cast, servomotors built into it to allow normal use of the limb as it healed. He winced slightly as he looked at it.

She obviously noticed his scrutiny. "It should be fully regenerated in a few days," she said simply. "Thank you for saving my life. A broken arm is a small price to pay."

Beside her Jolee – still wearing that odd-looking circlet – for the first time that Tamar could remember really did look his age, weary and drained. His eyes looked to be miles away, not seeing either the room or the people around him.

Carth just looked plain uncomfortable. Every now and then, his gaze flicked across to Yuthura and his mouth tightened. Tamar held back a sigh. Yes, there would be a certain amount of tension in that direction, wouldn't there?

He cleared his throat – no sense in stalling or drawing this out unnecessarily. "I thought we should use this time to discuss our plan of action."

"Really? Wow, I can see now why we need you as leader. I'm sure none of the rest of us would ever have been able to come up with such an ingenious idea."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence Jolee." Tamar smiled. He chose to deliberately ignore the sarcasm in the old man's words and take them purely at face value. Mainly because he knew that Jolee found it intensely annoying.

"My pleasure."

Tamar looked at Carth. "What's our eventual destination?"

"The outer edges of the Ando system."

He struggled to hide his surprise. The Ando system was the home of the Aqualish, who didn't have the reputation for being the most welcoming sorts. It seemed an unusual choice. In fact, short of somewhere like Korriban or Ziost, it was one of the last places he would have expected

"Our old friend Suvam Tan has set up shop in a derelict spacestation orbiting the outermost planet in the system," Carth stated. "He doesn't have any particular ties to either the Republic or the Sith, and we figured he might still think he owes us something for saving his ass from those Trandoshans out at Yavin. Besides, we need somewhere where we can get properly equipped."

"And as another plus none of us has any connection to the system, so it shouldn't be an obvious place to start a search," Jolee added.

Tamar nodded. "I should say thank you to all of you for what you've just done."

HK-47 spoke up. "Statement: I preferred my version of the rescue plan, master. A great many meatbags would have died. It would have been a thing of great beauty. But nevertheless, it is good to have you back, whatever the means."

Tamar managed a tight smile at that. "It's good to be back, HK."

"Does this mean you're over your idiotic wish to be a martyr then?" Jolee asked pointedly.

"Circumstances change, don't they?" he said quietly. And a line that he couldn't go back from had been crossed. He looked at Carth again. "I know how difficult a decision that must have been, for some of you in particular."

"Hey, they were hanging you out to dry. The newscasts were calling you Darth Revan, and had judged your guilt and strung you up already. You're my friend, right? I wasn't about to sit by and let that happen, especially not when there's this new Sith Lord out there manipulating everything. I've sat back and just let things happen before, to my cost. Never again." Despite the words, Tamar could still see an echo of the torment in his eyes though.

"You can still back out of this Carth. No one else knows you were involved. Hell, you _should_ back out."

"I don't back out of things. I don't just run away. You should know that well enough by now." There was a challenging look in his eyes.

"It's not just going to be the Sith after us this time. It's going to be the Republic too. The Republic's been your whole life."

Carth was looking down at the back of his hands. "And that hasn't changed. I'm still doing my duty in the best interests of the Republic. Even if they might not see it that way right now."

"And what about Dustil?" Tamar asked him quietly.

Carth snorted, his gaze flicking briefly to Yuthura then back to Tamar. "He's a man now, whether I like that or not. He's not going to let me just go back to being his father. At least we can talk to each other without biting each other's heads off now." A forced laugh. "About one time in four, anyway. My decision is made, Tamar. Respect it."

"Thank you. I don't know if I'll ever be able to repay you, but thank you."

Carth looked up at him again. "What are friends for? Right?"

"What about you, Jolee? You've still got the option of backing out too."

"Trying to pension the old man off, eh? Saying that I can't cut it anymore. That I'm only fit for a nursing home."

"Well I hear some of those nurses are pretty damn hot," Tamar shrugged.

"Knowing my luck I'd get an Ithorian. Not that Ithorians can't be attractive, I'm sure. But they don't quite do it for me somehow." Jolee shook his head emphatically. "You don't get away from me that easily, boy. Besides, I pretty much burnt my bridges when I, er . . . borrowed this from the Jedi." He reached up and slipped the circlet off, wincing as he did so. "I can see why they forbade its use. Worse than wading through the swamps of Dagobah. You ever been to Dagobah? No? Well my advice is to stay well clear. You'd have to be the biggest fool in the galaxy to voluntarily spend more than five minutes there. Now what was I saying . . .?"

Yuthura spoke up before he'd even looked at her. "I'm in this just as deeply as you are, Tamar. There's no going back. There's only forward now. I chose my path, and this is they way it leads."

After a moment's pause, he nodded. "What answer did the council give you?" he asked her gently.

She didn't need to ask what he meant. "They told me that they would consider my request. That they would let me know their final decision within the day."

Only of course, now there would never be an answer. They shared a brief look and he could see the self-doubt in her eyes. He wanted to reassure her, but didn't know what he could say – didn't know if she'd welcome it anyway, particularly in front of all the others.

He glanced across at HK.

"I am ashamed that you would feel the need to even ask, master."

"T3?"

"Beep-beep-beep-oop."

So, everyone was with him. Part of him wished that they'd all done the sensible thing and told him to get lost. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, feeling momentarily overwhelmed.

Eventually he cleared his throat. "Have any of you discovered anything about our new Sith Lord?" he asked, all business on the outside at least. "Something that might give us a start on where to look at least."

"In case you hadn't noticed we were busy planning a rescue for some cretin who managed to go and get himself arrested," Jolee answered tartly.

"We were hoping that you might be able to tell us something," Carth added.

Tamar nodded slowly. Nothing beyond his one vision of the woman, standing on the balcony of their bedchamber beneath the light of three moons, had come to him despite all his efforts to tease something out. He looked at HK, recalling the one thing Yuthura had mentioned about the possible identity of the Sith. "Do you remember my head of intelligence operations when you where serving me in my Revan identity, HK? A human female I believe."

Light flashed in HK's eyes. "Answer: that would be the Lady Fel, master. Morrigance Fel. A most ingenious and creative organic meatbag. I liked her. Although I would of course happily crush her neck for you master, should the opportunity arise."

Morrigance Fel, he mused, though the name awakened nothing. Darth Morrigance. Darth Fel. Both sounded appropriate enough, though that of course meant nothing. "Could you describe her for me HK? Physically I mean"

"Apology: sorry, master. I prefer not to linger over the appearance of organic meatbags who I am not permitted to assassinate.

"Clarification: not of course that I wish to imply that I find your physical appearances disgustingly wet and squelchy, or in any other way distressing. Oh no."

Tamar thought back to the woman in his vision, and the woman who had shown him her burned, skull-like face. "Between five eleven and six one tall. Weighs one-hundred and thirty to one-hundred and fifty pounds. Pale skin. Brown eyes. Black or near-black hair."

"She would possibly fit within those parameters, master. Although her appearance was not a constant thing. She was, after all, a spy."

"And a Dark Jedi?"

"Again, possibly master, although I never saw her wield a lightsaber. A believe she was at least Force sensitive, however. Regret: I feel I have failed you somehow master."

"Never mind HK. At least we have a name to work with now."

"This was only a speculative guess on my part, Tamar." Yuthura said warningly. "I would not get too hung up on the idea."

"Speculative guesses are better than the rest of what I've got right now. It's a possible lead at least." His fingertips traced patterns on the tabletop. "In the vision I had of her I was on a planet with three moons. Two larger and white, the third smaller and red. The red one probably has an atmosphere – that would explain the colour – so is in reality likely to be the largest of the three, and the furthest out. In fact, scratch that. It might not have been a moon at all, just a big gas giant in an adjacent orbit." He tried to tease out every last detail from the vision. "Warm, temperate climate. Mountainous." At least, there had been mountains visible along the horizon line. "Heavy vegetation." Simply from the way the air had smelt.

"Could be almost anywhere," Carth commented. "There are more than 10,000 registered systems in the republic alone. We don't have the _Hawk's_ extensive astronavigation charts. Maybe Suvam Tan will, although from your description it's going to be a needle in a haystack job."

"I'm guessing it was more likely part of the Sith Empire."

Yuthura frowned, headtails adjusting themselves in a way that he knew indicated uncertainty. "From the description it is not anywhere that I am familiar with. Certainly not any of the core Sith worlds. Although if it was a lover's retreat it would likely have been somewhere very private where you were confidant you would not be vulnerable."

"W-wait a minute," Carth interrupted. "Let me get this straight, Tamar. You and this Sith Lord we're looking for were lovers!"

Tamar stifled a sigh. "Our conversation, and the vision I had, indicated so." He wondered briefly if the vision was a fake somehow, sent to disorientate and distract. "I can't actually remember any of it, so I can't honestly say that I'm a hundred percent sure."

Carth had his head in his hands. "This just gets better and better. You really are a walking disaster area aren't you? You weren't joking when you said that. Not just a Sith Lord, but a scorned female Sith Lord ex-lover." A mock shudder. "You really do know how to pick them."

"It still isn't too late to change your mind Carth."

"No, no. That isn't what I meant, and you know it."

Tamar looked to Yuthura again as another possible idea occurred. "Do you know where the Sith might have their major military production facilities and research labs? I'm thinking biotech in particular."

"The Dantalus and Khar Zaran systems are possibly the largest ones. That I know of anyway. But there are smaller facilities of one kind or another right throughout Sith space, and we also bought in a lot of military equipment from both Czerka and the Hutts. The idea is not to present any single target that the Republic could strike at to cripple the Sith war effort. Why?"

"While I was a prisoner I spoke briefly with Admiral Dodonna. She mentioned that the bio-toxin used to kill the Jedi Council had . . . rather unusual properties. If trying to track down the Sith herself proves a dead-end, then finding the source of the poison might lead us to her more indirectly."

"Beep-wop-bop-beep-beep-woo-beep!" All eyes turned on T3 as he chimed in emphatically.

"Master, the bucket of bolts claims to have downloaded the chemical structure of the poison you are referring to whilst he was accessing Republic security computer systems during our efforts to secure your release. He is likely just showing off."

"Good work T3," For the first time Tamar started to feel like he wasn't just scrabbling around blindly in the dark. "One more thing. Admiral Dodonna also brought up the fact that there are two new individuals who are both staking a claim to the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith. Darth Malefic and Darth Auza . . ."

"Auza?" Yuthura sounded startled. "As in Auza the Hutt?"

"You know him?" Then, in surprise. "A Hutt? I know Hutts tend to be resistant to the Force, but I've never heard of one that was even a Jedi, let alone a Sith Lord."

"He's human," she said quietly. "'_The Hutt_' is simply what everyone calls him – behind his back at least. He was one of Uthar's peers. Not a friend of his exactly, but as close to it as most Sith get. As Uthar's favoured pupil I met him on several occasions." Yuthura expression twisted into a grimace of distaste. "A truly vile man, and considering what I was, and some of the people I knew . . . that is not something I say lightly. He's old for a Sith: at least seventy, and possibly substantially older than that. I'm surprised he would make a bid to be Dark Lord though. He always prided himself on his cleverness and skill at pulling strings from the background; better to be the power behind the throne than the power, he was fond of saying." She hesitated. "His base of operation is – or used to be, last I heard – in the Dantalus system. A floating villa in the atmosphere of the Dantalus VI gas giant."

"Then I think," Tamar said softly, "that we should probably pay a visit to Dantalus and the Hutt."

-s-s-

The _Excelsior_ – flagship of the self-proclaimed Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Malefic – hung at full stop amid what resembled a graveyard for old starships.

The vast horde of wrecked ships floating in that area of space were the remnants of a brutal battle against Mandalorian invaders nearly twenty years past, and encompassed everything from single-seat hyperdrive-less fighters to hulking capital ships almost as large as the _Excelsior_. All of them orbited the system's ordinary red-orange star in a stately silence – an eternal monument to the follies of war.

A few million kilometres inwards towards the sun, the system's one previously life-bearing planet span wobblingly on its axis – charred black, its atmosphere choked with smoke and ash intershot with bright orange threads of lava from its still semi-molten surface.

A fast hyperspace shuttle had just docked in one of the _Excelsior's_ main hangars, an honour guard of elite crimson armoured Sith troopers flanking either side of its boarding ramp. There was a soft hydraulic hiss and the ramp descended.

First out, walking at strict attention, was a squad of six more crimson clad elite troopers, heavily armed and armoured. Behind them, clothed in robes of grey, black cowls covering their heads, strode a pair of Dark Jedi, arrogance personified, lightsabers displayed prominently at their hips.

Then came Darth Malefic himself. Even though it was already utterly quiet, it still seemed as if a hush descended, tension palpable in the air with his arrival.

He was a hugely imposing figure, toweringly tall and powerfully built, dressed in heavy armour of dark imperial purple hue. Helmet and massively broad, baroque shoulder plates were fused into a single piece, the helmet's single narrow eye-slit glowing with silver light. A heavy black cloak, patterned with strange and intricate purple designs, flared out behind him as he walked, the ribbed skirts of a long black war kilt whispering around his ankles with each step. Underneath all that, Malefic could have been any one of a dozen different humanoid species.

A second squad of Sith troopers brought up the rear.

Waiting at the head of the honour guard, Sith Captain Vosk Bortha dropped down to one knee and bowed his head. Fear thrummed through the man. "My Lord, your flagship awaits your command."

There was an agonisingly drawn out pause.

"Rise Captain." Darth Malefic's voice was surprisingly soft, belying his fearsomely warlike appearance. There was a slightly odd undertone of lisping sibilance to it. "You have the shipment in your possession?"

"Yes my lord."

"Then lead me to it without delay. I am most eager to view my new prize."

Captain Bortha inclined his head, trying not to scurry, or sweat too conspicuously as he lead the Sith Lord to the _Excelsior's_ bridge.

There, waiting for them, was a battered looking transport crate. Markings on the side indicated that it had once been part of the manifest of a ship called the _Flying Kuat_, travelling out of Ossus.

"You have opened it captain?" Darth Malefic asked as he stood before it, looking down.

"No my lord," Bortha replied. "I believe the pirates we recovered it from tried to make use of its powers, but were unsuccessful. All proper scans have been made to ensure that the crate is safe, and that it contains the artefact you seek, but I thought the honour of being the first among us to lay eyes on it should be yours alone."

"Very good, Captain." Malefic gestured with an armoured purple glove at one of the Dark Jedi flanking him. Immediately she stepped forward, opening the crate's lid, before stepping aside again so that the Dark Lord could see what was inside unimpeded.

Bortha actually thought that he heard Malefic's breath catch.

At that moment, there was a warbling note from one of the _Excelsior's_ communication posts. "M-My Lord," the duty ensign spoke up tentatively. "We have just received a communication for you. From your apprentice."

Darth Malefic turned around slowly. Another tensely expectant hush fell.

"Open a line then, ensign."

"My Lord."

Abruptly the hologram of a figure, clothed and cowled entirely in black, appeared. The figure swept a low bow, light penetrating their cowl just enough to give a hint of a mirror-finished mask. A female voice, calmly emotionless to the point of sounding computerised, spoke up. "My lord and master, I trust that the intelligence I provided has proven satisfactory, and you are now in possession of the artefact. I simply wished to report that phase one of your plan has been concluded successfully, and be the first to extended my congratulations to the new Supreme Lord of the Sith – soon to be master of all the galaxy." The message concluded with another sweeping bow.

After a slight pause, Darth Malefic gestured to the comm. officer and the hologram vanished. He stepped forward and reached inside the crate.

The object that he pulled out was clearly meant to be a crown. It was a ring of plain and heavy bronze-hued metal, eight inches deep and open at the front. On either side of that front opening was a long spike made of either glass or crystal.

Despite the plainness of its design, and the lack of ostentatious decoration, it managed to convey a sense of deep majesty and power. For a long moment, Darth Malefic simply stared at it, seemingly captivated.

As he looked on, Captain Bortha felt an ominous sense of dread – a deathly cold skeletal grip around his heart.

Malefic lifted the crown and placed it upon his helmeted brow. It seemed to adjust itself somehow as he lowered it so that it fit him perfectly, even over his helm. The twin crystal spikes caught the light, and suddenly they appeared to shine.

"Let this day be written into history." The Dark Lord's voice echoed as he spoke. "Let the entire galaxy know my name and tremble."

A cheer went up, resounding round the _Excelsior's_ bridge. It held as much fear as it did enthusiasm.


	3. Into the Hutt's Lair

**3. Into the Hutt's Lair**

It was called the Eye of Simus – a centre of calm no more than fifty miles across, around which span a perpetual, millennia old storm in the atmosphere of the Dantalus VI gas giant. Vast walls of dark cloud hundreds of miles deep loomed imposingly around the Eye, flickering constantly with multicoloured flashes of lightning. Inside the eye itself though, all was tranquil and still.

At the centre of the Eye, an object floated like a gleaming silver pupil. Drawing closer, this pupil resolved into a floating citadel – an intricate mass of archways, domes, soaring spires and sumptuous gardens protected from the vagaries of Dantalus VI's atmosphere by translucent force shields and held aloft by hundreds of repulsors. Against the walls of storm clouds, it looked impossibly tiny and fragile, little more than a child's toy – except that the scale of the landing pad on one side of the structure indicated it was probably over a mile across.

A waterfall burbled in one of the gardens, birds and insects chirruping in the carefully regulated air.

A man and woman walked through that garden hand in hand, crossing a glass bridge that arched above a fast flowing stream. They were beautiful – although it was a blankly symmetrical, too perfect kind of beauty – and so utterly alike that it seemed they could only be twins. Golden haired and glowing, constantly smiling, there was something unreal about them, and the exactly precise unison of their every movement was decidedly eerie.

A pair of gates opened before them automatically, and then they were walking through tastefully decorated marble clad halls.

They passed by others on their way – slaves by the discreet metal collars that they wore – without so much as a glance.

All of the slaves were of species that were considered pleasing to the eye judged in human terms – humans themselves, Twilek's, and Zeltrons making up the majority – and all of them were particularly attractive members of their species. Every one of them had the same vacant look in their eyes, dressed to decorate and please the eye like pretty, life-sized dolls. Watching the slaves' movements for any length of time tended to put an observer in mind of droids – something that was mechanical and not entirely natural.

More doors swung open before them, admitting them to a vast central audience chamber. A transparisteel roof let in light from the Dantalus system's yellow sun, luxuriant vegetation growing up and around ornate pillars, the air warm and humid like a tropical arboretum.

". . . M-My Lord Auza, I swear to you, I will not fail you again. P-Please, if you give me the chance I will redeem my mistake . . ." The speaker, a human male in his forties, dressed in grey Sith military uniform, stammered to a halt, swallowing heavily.

"It is not so much your mistake that worries me, Captain. All of us make mistakes from time to time – perhaps even myself upon occasion, I might venture." Darth Auza's voice held an unpleasantly liquid, almost gurgling undertone.

"M-My Lord?"

"No, what I find . . . disappointing is your efforts to hide your error and pass the blame off onto others. I am not a harsh master, Captain. All I ask from those who serve me is a modicum of competence and honest endeavour. I do not think that is too much to expect, do you?"

"N-No master." A glistening bead of sweat trickled down the side of the Captain's face.

The golden haired twins came to a halt a couple of paces behind him, flanking him on either side. The muscles in the back of the Captain's neck tensed visibly.

"Excellent." Auza smiled. It was a grisly spectacle. But then, everything about Auza was rather grisly.

Reclining on a gigantic velvet-cushioned throne, the Sith Lord must have weighed in at somewhere around the eight hundred pound mark, draped in black cloth voluminous enough to serve a more normally sized human as a tent. The skin of his huge pasty-white moon face was so rough and dry that it looked scaled, and numerous transparent tubes connected into his corpulent flesh – back-up for internal organs that were too damaged and palsied to keep his body functioning under their own power anymore.

A surprisingly delicate hand gestured at the air. "Celyanda, please be so good as to show the good Captain here out. I expect that he wants to dwell upon what we have discussed."

"Master." The twins' perfect lips moved in stereo, their voices a sweetly symphonic duet.

The Captain started to stammer his thanks even as a pair of matching lightsabers were igniting simultaneously with a soft _snap-hiss_. The blades shone with pure white light and flashed together in lightning fast strokes. Not even having time to flinch, the Captain collapsed to the floor in three neat segments.

"Mercy has no place in a Sith. You should know that, Captain."

Next to Auza's cushioned throne a holoprojector flickered on, displaying a slender figure robed and cowled in black.

"Most distressing." Auza let out a gurgling sigh as he watched the twins moving efficiently to tidy up the cauterised body parts. "And so early in the morning too. There are times, my apprentice, when I truly wonder over the path I have taken, and the heavy burdens that have fallen upon me." One of his hands groped for a metal bowl beside him. It fished out a large, black beetle-like creature, which wriggled in his grasp as he held up in front of his face, peering at it intently.

"I presume, since you had me witness this, master, that an object lesson was intended." The black clad hologram's voice was emotionless: female, but hardly feminine.

"Hmm?" Abruptly Auza gulped the beetle into his mouth. There was a wet crunching sound, followed by a truly hideous, slurping, sucking noise. A moment or two later he fished the fractured carapace from between his lips and discarded it in a metal bucket. "Oh, I wouldn't read _too_ much into it, my apprentice."

"But nevertheless, I get the definite sense that you are not entirely pleased with me."

"Well, Revan is still alive, hmm? I recall us agreeing that this was a disagreeable state of affairs, and one that should be rectified at the earliest opportunity. Am I mistaken in this recollection?"

The hologram bowed her head. "No, my master. Nevertheless, not wishing to make excuses, but matters have not worked out entirely to our disadvantage."

The twins had finished gathering up the Sith Captain, and stood motionless, waiting for orders. Auza gestured at them dismissively. "Dispose of him however is most convenient, Celyanda, and leave us."

Auza's attention returned to the hologram. "Oh indeed, my apprentice. One can find good in almost any situation, I've found. And the Jedi Council's fate certainly raised a smile. But now that he has escaped Republic custody, I'm minded to feel a _tiny_ bit concerned. Whilst he still lives there will always be some who doubt my claim upon his former title, whether he truly wants it back or not."

The holographic figure bowed once more. Moving as one, the twins turned on heel and started to walk away. "I shall endeavour to correct that state of affairs at the earliest opportunity, my master."

"Indeed. But do please take care, my dear. I would hate to lose such a promising student . . ."

The conversation faded from the twins' earshot.

-s-s-

Tamar drew a card from the Pazaak deck and turned it over distractedly. A five, which took his total to sixteen. Briefly, he considered playing the last card in his hand and standing on nineteen, but he was already two sets to one down, and his opponent had a card left in his hand too. He waved that he passed. His mind really wasn't on the game.

Jolee drew a six, taking him to eighteen. With a murmur of satisfaction, he augmented that with a two from his hand. Twenty. Again. He sat back in his chair, fingers interlaced behind the back of his head, and smiled serenely.

Next up Tamar pulled a nine. Twenty-five and bust.

"I make that six games in a row. You don't seem to be taking this seriously."

Tamar shook his head. The game was way down his priorities right now. "Jolee, how is it that a Sith Lord stroll can stroll unimpeded into the grand Jedi temple on Coruscant, walk its halls completely unnoticed, and then kill the Council without any of them sensing a thing, before walking straight out again, unchallenged?"

A slight pause. "I have no idea. It's impossible."

Tamar looked at Jolee sharply, sensing he was being mocked. "Impossible?"

"Or so both the Jedi and Sith believed, I'm sure. Which is why the Council weren't looking out for it, and the Sith never tried it before. They both knew it was impossible, and you'd have to be a complete moron to even think of trying. I'd venture that it was _very nearly_ as impossible as a Jedi walking into the Sith Academy on Korriban unchallenged and graduating head of his class without anyone suspecting."

He grunted softly. _Point taken_.

Jolee swept up his winnings – a pile of nuts and bolts. "Another game . . .?" he started. Tamar idly reached across and touched the last card Jolee had played – the +2.

"Hey, don't do that . . ."

Tamar bent the card fractionally. The image on it flickered wildly. +1. -6. +3. -4. He fixed Jolee with a long, level look. "A wildcard? Cheating in a game for nuts and bolts? I'd like to say I was shocked . . ."

"Hey, I was just testing to see if you were paying attention. Which obviously you weren't, since it took you this long to catch. Very sloppy I must say. A Jedi needs always to be mindful . . ." He trailed off as Tamar continued simply to look at him and coughed. "Anyway, you were saying?"

"I was?"

"Yes, yes. You were."

An involuntary smile cracked across Tamar's lips. "So, anyway, _cheating_ aside, I was saying . . . how is it possible that the council didn't sense the Sith Lord's presence so close to them?"

"Pretty obvious, I'd have thought. They weren't looking because they knew she couldn't possibly be there."

"But I felt her."

"Because _you_ knew her. And even then only when it was too late to do anything about her," Jolee pointed out. "Besides, how many of the council do you think are stronger in the Force than you are?"

He shrugged. It wasn't the sort of question he'd considered. "All of them, I would imagine."

Jolee snorted, as if Tamar had made a bad joke. "Vandar perhaps was, although I still wouldn't have put any vast amounts of money on it. Look, can you honestly imagine any of that lot fighting their way through the Star Forge and defeating Darth Malak right at the heart of his dark source of power?"

"I'm a soldier. Fighting is what I do. Possibly the one thing I'm any good for. But I'm not stupid enough to believe for a moment that how well you swing a lightsaber has anything much to do with your strength in the Force."

Maybe," Jolee shrugged. "But don't let titles fool you either. A title just means you've stuck around in one place long enough for someone to pin some rank on you." He shook his head. "No, Jedi as naturally strong in the Force as you and Bastila very rarely make it to become Jedi Masters, let alone part of the council."

"Why not?" Tamar asked, not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"Because," he said softly, "most of the really talented ones either die young or fall to the darkside. Either that or they go insane."

"Well, there's a comforting thought. Death. The darkside. Insanity. Oh, the choices."

"I've seen it time and again. It comes too easily for them, you see. The really naturally Force strong don't have to learn the same discipline and control as the rest of us. They don't acquire the same wisdom and self-limitation, because they can just wave their hands and make things happen, easy as breathing. It makes you reckless and headstrong and arrogant."

Tamar nodded. "I've been down that path, haven't I?" It was an entirely rhetorical question.

"But not this time." Jolee was looking at him intently.

Tamar let out a breath, stretching in the cramped metal chair. He gave a slight forced chuckle. "No, this time I get to make an entirely new set of mistakes. Don't think I don't appreciate the chance."

Before anything else could be said, there was a loud crash from the next room. A moment later Suvam Tan could be heard, swearing in Rodian. "Damn Gizka . . ."

Tamar stood up and went to take a look.

"Hey there, Mr. R." He jolted slightly at the cheerful greeting from right beside his ear.

Suvam Tan had hired a pair of Defel brothers as bodyguards after the incident with the Trandoshans. Defels were a rather odd species with hide that could somehow partially absorb light, making them resemble walking shadows. They were masters of stealth and very effective fighters, and if you weren't paying attention, it was quite possible to walk within inches of one of them without ever noticing. Like now for instance.

"Morning . . . Kreish," Tamar hazarded after a moment's pause. It was virtually impossible for a non-Defel to distinguish between individual members of the species based solely on appearance. Only the Force gave him any guide at all.

"And a mighty fine one it is too, Mr. R," Kreish added. Somehow, cheery affability was not a trait that Tamar had expected from a Defel, to the point of it being somewhat disconcerting.

Suvam Tan was down on his knees, trying to sort through an array of spilled components where three large boxes had been knocked over. The offending pet gizka was cowering in a corner beneath a worktable, apparently intelligent enough to realise that it wasn't particularly popular at that moment. "This is going to take me all day to sort out," he lamented.

Yuthura had also come to investigate the cause of the uproar. She nodded to Tamar in greeting, then – after a moment's hesitation – knelt down beside Suvam. "Let me," she told the Rodian. Tamar could feel a vague ghost of discomfort and embarrassment from her, as if this kind of trivial interaction required a special effort on her part.

Abruptly about a third of the spilled parts, all of the same size and type, separated out from the spilled mess and floated up into the air. Tamar could feel the subtly delicate threads of Force she was weaving as she manoeuvred them into one of the boxes. Once that was done, a second lot of matched components lifted into the air and deposited themselves into a second box. It was quite impressive. Not so much the levitation – an apprentice Jedi could do that easily – but the fact that she could do it while picking out one type of component from the whole jumble of others so apparently effortlessly; that took real skill.

"Um, if you're bored, I've got lots of other boxes that need sorting," Suvam Tan said hopefully when she'd finished.

Yuthura simply looked at him.

"Erm, guess not."

"An exercise my teacher used to make me do, though with different shaped beads rather than circuit components." Yuthura said quietly as she came alongside him. He noticed, as he looked at her that the sling was gone from her arm. "Inanimate objects may not connect to the Force directly, but they still leave imprints upon it. It's easy enough if you practise." Then, abruptly: "You have something you want to ask me."

Tamar didn't manage to hide his surprise very well.

She smiled slightly, little movements of her head tails indicating a degree of genuine amusement. It faded quickly. "Logic dictates you had to ask. I didn't need any special Force sense; just some commonsense." She made a gesture. "Shall we walk?"

He nodded agreement, falling into stride with her. He paused fractionally before asking the question she apparently knew was coming: "Do you feel capable of doing some acting?"

She didn't need to ask what he meant. "To the Sith I am a traitor, Tamar. I will not be forgiven for walking away. If I'm caught I will be interrogated, then executed summarily." She passed him a data card.

On it was a picture of her in grey Sith uniform, a brief written background, and a genetic fingerprint. There were also two sums of money. The first was merely extremely large. The second, directly below the first, could buy a person anything from a top of the line capital ship to a small moon.

He let out a low whistle. "At least they seem eager to take you alive."

She looked at him sourly. "Since _alive_ likely means a prolonged period of torture followed by an equally prolonged death I struggle to see it as much of an upside."

"No, alive is good," he insisted. "Easier to dodge. Nobody's going to want to risk losing that much money by sniping your head off from a couple of miles away."

"What a comforting thought."

He opened his mouth to apologise, feeling a burn in his cheeks that hopefully his skin colouring disguised, but she continued over him. "I did not say I wouldn't do it, Tamar. I will, because you are the one to ask me. I'm just saying that it will not be a simple thing."

Tamar felt something clench painfully inside his chest at her words. "Don't do it because I asked you to. If you don't think it will work – if you don't want to, or have any doubts at all – say no."

"I have all the doubts in the world. But I can't say no."

"You can always say no."

She laughed – a low, throaty sound. "No Tamar, I can't. And you know above anyone exactly why I can't. Now stop trying to dissuade me from something that we all need, and tell me the details of your plan." She tilted her head as she looked at him. "You do have a plan I take it?"

After a pause, he nodded. _I always have a plan, don't I?_

They stopped walking in a cluttered work area, standing side by side together in front of a view port overlooking a small, dirty grey snowball of a planet. Once the Aqualish had tried mining this world – hence the spacestation – but conditions had been too difficult to make it worthwhile. Their facilities had stood abandoned for decades.

"We've both seen the newscasts," he began. "As far as most of the galaxy is concerned you're Darth Revan's new apprentice. You helped destroy the Jedi council. Far from being a traitor, you did what any ambitious Sith would – you chose the path of power and joined the winning side. You are, in fact, the second most powerful Sith in the entire galaxy, herald of the return of the true Dark Lord as he comes forth to reclaim his rightful crown."

"Interesting spin." She gave a dark, almost helpless sounding laugh. "You know, horrible as all this is, I can't help appreciating the irony of it."

He grimaced, but she cut him off before he could say anything. "And no more apologies Tamar. You have nothing to apologise to me for."

He wasn't sure he agreed with that, but he didn't press. "You said that Auza is unlikely to agree to meet me directly?"

"Not a chance," she confirmed, head tails flicking emphatically. "He knows you from the time you assumed the mantle of Dark Lord. You're one of his favourite anecdotes, in fact. He just loves to tell how he was the first of the Sith to acclaim you as Dark Lord. How he _made_ you, even."

"_Made _me?" Tamar's lips twisted distastefully. He didn't like the sound of that one bit.

"Oh, yes." Her tone was darkly amused "Made you. From what I gather, you – Revan – had come before the Grand Sith Council on Ziost, a fleet at your back, demanding that they acknowledge you as the rightful ruler of the entire Sith Empire. Naturally the Sith Council refused you out of hand." She displayed pointed white teeth. "Six dead council members later, Auza saw the wisdom of your demands and proclaimed you Darth Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith – him being seventh in line having absolutely nothing at all to do with his decision. I paraphrase of course. Auza himself tells a much more noble and dramatic tale."

Tamar digested the information. It was always strange hearing about his former self, able to remember none of it, and not knowing how he should react. Recently, he could never quite manage to feel quite as guilty as he thought he should, and even then, the guilt seemed to be about the wrong things.

"The critical point being," Yuthura continued. "That – underneath all his bravado – Auza is absolutely terrified of you. And now he's gone and laid claim to your old title." Her head tails gestured an emphatic negative. "He's not going to voluntarily allow you within a dozen light years of him, even if he does believe you're on the Sith's side again."

"But he has no reason to feel afraid of you, does he? If you were to contact him on my behalf, offering an alliance – he might find it . . . intriguing enough to agree to meet you in person."

After a lengthy silence, she nodded. "He might."

Or he might just try to kill her out of hand. Both of them knew that very well. To a large extent it depended on how much Auza knew about what had really happened on Coruscant, and how much could be bluffed.

"I'll need a spaceship," Yuthura said emphatically after a pause. "Something small and armed for preference – appropriate for the apprentice of the Dark Lord, that I can pilot on my own."

"On your own?"

She looked at him patiently. "You can't come with me, Tamar. We have to assume that Auza knew what you looked like beneath the robes and mask, and if he gets even a hint of someone matching your description . . ."

"But it won't be me with you," Tamar turned away from the view port and began searching through some of the clutter filling the room. "Now I'm sure I saw it here earlier . . ."

"Tamar . . ."

"What about the Defel's skyrunner do you think?" he said conversationally as he continued searching. "I'm sure I can persuade Kreish to loan it to us. It's hyperspace capable, will accommodate two in relative comfort, and is based on a modified Aratech patrol-ship design. Packs quite a punch – I'd take it up against a Sith fighter any day." He made a muttered exclamation of triumph, pulling something out from the back of a shadowed recess. "Here we are. I knew I'd seen it lying around." He held up the helm of a suit of Mandalorian armour for her inspection.

Yuthura looked nonplussed.

"_I_ may not be able to go with you, but Canderous Ordo can. Your own personal Mandalorian bodyguard and servant. Auza surely can't object to you having a little back-up?"

"I thought I heard Jolee saying that Canderous was with a Republic taskforce on the outer rim?"

Tamar made a tutting noise. "He doesn't have to be though, does he?" He lifted the helmet on over his head, and abruptly his voice became several degrees gruffer, the accent altering substantially. "I'm here if you want something doing right."

Yuthura shook her head, smiling in helpless resignation.

-s-s-

The vornskr gave a low, cackling growl of warning from deep inside its chest. Its eyes caught the dim light in the cargo hold, reflecting it so that they seemed to glow with malevolent red-orange light. Its long, whip-like tail made a soft _swooshing_ noise as wove back and forth in the air.

"Nice puppy." Shakrill – a huge, battle-scarred Trandoshan – bared his teeth as he leant forward, his face level with the vornskr's eyes.

Abruptly, the growling stopped. The vornskr launched itself directly at him.

Shakrill didn't so much as flinch. The vornskr slammed into the layer of force field between them and bounced off with a sharp _crack_. It howled in pain, then started pacing back and forth the length of its pen, tail weaving, growling and cackling like a revving engine. Shakrill burst out laughing. "Not so tough in there, are you puppy?"

"Shak, get away from there! Now!"

The big Trandoshan straightened and looked round. "I was just having a bit of fun, Rath. No harm in that." His hand came up involuntarily to rub at the side of his scaled red-brown face. There was a livid scar there where the vornskr's tail had lashed him when they were trying to capture it.

"We're not in this for fun. This is deadly serious."

Shakrill made a growling sound almost the match of the vornskr's. He stepped forward, at close to seven foot tall towering over Rath. "What makes your new pet so special anyway? To me it looks like nothing more than a kath hound with an attitude problem. What makes it worth all the trouble?"

Rath Gannaya didn't give an inch to the Trandoshan, meeting his gaze calmly despite the fact he was physically dwarfed. In his forties, he was no more than average height and build with neat black hair and a precisely razored beard. His clothing was of discreetly expensive cut, and gave him more the look of an Alderaanian noble at his leisure than the bounty hunter he was. "Vornskrs have one rather interesting property that makes them just about unique in the known galaxy. They hunt and track prey using the Force. Know what that means Shak?"

Shakrill sneered. "They can hunt and track Jedi? Thought it'd be something like that. You do know that isn't going work, don't you Rath?" The Trandoshan mimed a chopping motion, accompanied by a swooshing noise. "Dead vornskr in two pieces."

Rath gave a snorting laugh. "Maybe so, Shak. But the vornskr was just an added bonus. A curiosity if you will. Our trip to Myrkr was nothing to do with capturing us a vornskr."

Incredulity showed in Shakrill's reptilian eyes. His voice was a rasping growl. "You mean to say I went through all that trouble for nothing? So what was the point of Myrkr then, you damned Bantha-lover? A nice vacation?"

"Hardly."

"So what did we gain from it?" Shakrill bared his teeth, though Rath didn't seem the slightest bit intimidated. "One new pet dog and a bunch of weird little salamander creatures? You thinking of getting out of the bounty hunting business and starting up a zoo?" Abruptly the Trandoshan's eyes widened. "You don't mean those itty-bitty salamander things . . .?"

"Yes, Shak. Those 'itty-bitty salamander things'. You'd be amazed by what they can do." _Something his late, unlamented father had been good for; who'd have thought_. Rath turned away abruptly, touching his earpiece. "Kreed, how soon till we reach Taris?"

Shakrill stared after him angrily. The vornskr kept on prowling back and forth.

-s-s-

The cramped confines of the Defels' skyrunner did not allow for much in the way of privacy or comfort. Tamar stretched in the pilot's seat, feeling several of his vertebrae crack and pop. They were still in hyperspace, and would be for at least another couple of hours until they reached the Sith Outpost of Khar Dobra. Yuthura had a contact there she hoped she could use to get in touch with Auza's people, to arrange safe passage through Dantalus's defences.

Stifling a yawn, he glanced back over his shoulder.

Yuthura was in the middle of changing, transforming herself back into a high ranking Sith – apprentice to the Dark Lord himself. Her back was to him, and the back of her jumpsuit was unzipped. Tamar couldn't help but stop and stare.

The flesh of her shoulders was immaculately smooth pale violet, patterned with delicate intertwining lines of tattoos that marked her as both trained dancer and property. That wasn't what caught his eyes though. Below the midpoint of her back her skin was marred by a mass of vicious looking scars – weals on top of weals and cuts on top of cuts – long healed into an intricate relief-map of old pain and suffering.

Seemingly sensing the scrutiny, she glanced over her shoulder, catching both his look and its meaning. "They're from a shock lash," she told him quietly and matter-of-factly. "My owner, Omeesh, liked to watch his slaves being flogged. His Weequay guards were certainly . . . enthusiastic enough in their obedience of his orders. I was fortunate compared to some. My scars are where they can easily be hidden. I think Omeesh preferred not to mar the aesthetics of his pleasure slaves." She drew the zip closed and turned entirely round to face him.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to . . ."

"Don't be silly Tamar. It was a long time ago." Her attempt at a smile didn't quite come off.

"Would it help to talk, or would you prefer me to shut the hell up?" he asked her.

She didn't answer right away, in the midst of attaching lightweight armour plates over the top of the skin-tight, glossy black material of the jumpsuit – light enough that they wouldn't impede either her saber fighting or Force usage, but sufficiently sturdy to provide a degree of protection against blaster fire. Finally, she said: "It never hurts to talk, I think, even about the difficult things."

The answer surprised Tamar.

"Perhaps if I had realised that earlier, instead of bottling it all in . . .." She drew what looked rather like an armour-plated girdle tight around her waist. "But my thoughts and emotions where the only things that ever truly belonged to me, and I had learnt well the need to keep them hidden deep inside – precious jewels guarded by a miser's hand. I nurtured all my anger and hate away from the sight of my Jedi teachers, until eventually . . .. Well you know _eventually_ well enough, don't you?"

She turned away, changing her headpiece for a more decorative and intricately designed one. He watched as she deftly wove what looked a bit like trailing strands of black ribbon in criss-cross patterns around her head tails.

"What happened, for Omeesh to punish you so severely?"

Yuthura shook her head. Her back was to him still "It didn't work like that. Omeesh was a sadist, and there was no logic or pattern to his sadism – no list of rules and transgressions you could use to keep yourself safe by. If there had been he would have been survivable – even bearable perhaps." She turned back to face him. "How do I look?"

Her face was made up to emphasise the paleness and starkness of the angles, her lips glossed black, making her teeth appear whiter and sharper than ever. With her skin-tight black jumpsuit and the strategically placed, gleaming black armour plates she looked strikingly lean and deadly, and . . . "Beautiful," he suggested.

He felt a flash of surprise from her. Very briefly, her face showed a mixture of both pleasure and embarrassment, before it quickly smoothed over to impassivity again. "My meaning was more as to whether you thought I would convince as apprentice to the Dark Lord?"

"I have complete confidence in you," he said, utterly serious.

"Thank you." Yuthura slid lithely into the co-pilot's seat next to him, briefly looking at his face with an expression that he found impossible to read. Her quiescent head tails, draped carefully over her shoulders, gave no further hint to her feelings. "That means a lot."

She looked out of the cockpit window, gazing off into the blankness of hyperspace. Eventually she resumed talking. "I'm still not sure if I was one of the lucky ones, or the opposite. I was one of Omeesh's favourites – he was appreciative of my skills as a dancer. That meant I lived long enough to see all of my friends die, and learn well the folly of making any new ones. I suppose that even then I was being tutored in how to be a Sith."

Tamar didn't say anything, but he could feel a definite stirring of cold, un-Jedi-like anger that was difficult to suppress.

"He liked to break people down," she continued quietly, eyes distant. "Omeesh wasn't content simply to own your flesh; he had to own your spirit too. His punishments were random and brutal. One day you would do something one way and he would reward you. The next, the very same action would earn you a flogging, or a beating, or a trip to the chastisement chambers. You couldn't avoid it – anything real or imagined might draw his ire. Some days you were punished simply because he hadn't punished you in a while.

"Making people grovel and humiliate themselves, and beg him for more punishment was one of his favourite things. He liked to make you to participate in your own degradation, and if you didn't amuse him enough that way, then he found other ways for you to amuse him – by feeding you to one of his pets, or . . ." her voice broke just fractionally, almost but not quite unnoticeable. ". . . or shipping you off to become arena fodder.

"One time he ordered me to dance for him. I had learned well enough that when you danced for Omeesh, you didn't stop until you were ordered to. Another dancer – Seela Vek her name was – had had her lekku amputated for that particular sin." A shudder passed through Yuthura's shoulders at that particular memory. "He never gave the order for me to stop. I danced for him for hours and hours, through the point of exhaustion and beyond, until my feet bled and every joint was agony. Eventually, I collapsed unconscious before my heart gave out. I must have amused him, because I was only flogged lightly afterwards. By Omeesh's standards it was almost affectionate."

As he listened, Tamar got the sense he was being told things she had never told anyone – that despite the matter-of-factness of tone she was digging a deep well of pain. He wanted to offer comfort, but wasn't sure how. "But you survived. You were strong, and came through everything he did to you. He never broke you."

She sighed softly to herself, and then shook her head. "I used to think that too. I used to pride myself on that, in fact – that I took all that Omeesh the Hutt could throw at me and was the one to walk away, more powerful than he could ever dream of being. But I was wrong. He broke me just as surely as he broke all his slaves. I just broke differently to how he expected. I broke with jagged edges." Her tone became grim. "Perhaps that was a comfort to him when I drove my stolen vibroblade into his corpulent flesh and sawed his throat open."

He could sense turmoil in her, ghosts of old anger mixing in with guilt and shame and other emotions he could not recognise. "There is peace," she murmured, all but inaudible. The turmoil slowly faded to something approaching calm acceptance.

After a brief hesitation he reached out and laid his hand over hers – slender-fingered and strong, nails sharper and thicker than those of a human; delicately manicured claws. She looked at him in surprise for a moment, then twined her fingers with his.

"There _is_ peace," she echoed more firmly.

The words stabbed him with piercing guilt, for all he knew there had been exactly the opposite intent. "I am sorry to be so selfish. To ask you to do this so soon after . . .. If it is too difficult . . ."

"I'm not worried about it being too difficult for me, Tamar," she interrupted him, staring off into space. "Quite the contrary. I'm more concerned that I will find it far, far too easy."

-s-s-

The seething mass of black storm clouds turned everything as dark as midnight, even though in reality it was almost noon. Taris knew only endless nighttime now, the sky above the clouds never so much as glimpsed. Only lightning provided any hint of illumination, though the lightning came frequently enough.

Juhani pulled the hood of her of Jedi robe in tighter against the icy edge of the howling wind. Tainted grey snow fell in dirty flurries. Hers and Zaalbar's fur provided a degree of protection against its poisonous, acidic bite, though Mission had not fared so well, the twi'lek girl's head tails getting burnt and blistered on the one occasion she'd made the mistake of venturing out without adequate protection.

Here you definitely didn't want to play at catching snowflakes on your tongue.

She walked through endless fields of rubble and wreckage, striding hard, leaning forward slightly to brace herself against the wind's intensifying fury. A good job she was relatively close to base camp, she reflected. In about half an hour conditions were likely going to turn exceedingly nasty indeed.

To her left stood a broken shard of shattered skyscraper, leaning at a precarious angle but still soaring several hundred feet above the surrounding rubble – a familiar landmark to guide her path. Once it had been part of a building that would almost have rivalled the skyscrapers of Coruscant. Now though . . ..

A weary, pained shake of her head. To think that she had once thought she despised this place – the bigotry and xenophobia; the grinding intolerance and inequality. Looking at it now, even after being back for over three months, all she could feel was bone deep sorrow. Home was home, however pitiful, and she had come to learn that sometimes it was possibly to weep for even your bitterest enemy.

Perhaps now, she thought, she understood some of what Tamar felt for Malak – his pain and regret that it couldn't have worked out differently.

As she turned a blind corner, the Force gave her just enough warning to draw the pair of lightsabers she carried and ignite them, their blades shining brilliant blue in the gloom. The wind whipped her robes hard around her body.

Rakghouls of course. Juhani knew that before she saw, or even heard them. On Taris, it was always Rakghouls. Scorching the planet seemed to have done little in the way of reducing their numbers. In fact, now they were pretty much the only life left – the sort of vermin that found a way to prosper, no matter what.

A pack of half a dozen of them descended on her, bounding over the wreckage from ever direction.

The Force flowed through all life, and all life formed part of the Force, precious in its own way. Juhani struggled to see that in Rakghouls, though. She struggled to see anything beyond the utterly vile. Perhaps it was because they were a disease, other lifeforms – humans; Twi'leks; perhaps even Cathar like herself – warped and parasitized by ravenous, mutating infection.

She span, neon blue blades forming a whirlwind of humming energy, slicing through greasy, putrid grey flesh as one of the Rakghouls lunged at her. It fell back, howling in pain and fury.

Then, before she could be overwhelmed, she drew upon the Force, using it to augment her leg muscles and launch herself, somersaulting backwards over the Rakghouls heads. She landed on high ground, atop a miniature mountain of debris, forcing them to come up at her from one side rather than every angle at once. They snarled and howled at her angrily.

As they came at her, she hurled her shorter bladed off-hand lightsaber, slicing straight through the front two and putting them down in an instant. The third– the one she'd already wounded – flung itself at her bodily, jaws snapping at her throat. She met it halfway with a fast right-to-left slash that severed it in two through the thorax.

Both blades where back in her hands.

The three remaining Rakghouls came up short, circling her warily, spreading out as though to flank her. Juhani wasn't sure if they'd always been like that, but of late, the things had been showing disturbing signs of learning – of acquiring tactics – instead of being simply the mindless, unsophisticated monsters that everybody thought them.

One of them darted forward. A feint, the Force told her, and she span, meeting the real lunge that would have ripped out her hamstrings if she'd bought it. Her off-hand sabre pierced the side of the attacking Rakghoul's skull, and it collapsed – dead weight – whatever it had for brains well and truly fried.

The remaining two tried to take her simultaneously in a pincer movement, but she was ready for them. A few spinning saber slashes later, she was the only one still standing. As corpses, the Rakghouls looked – and stank – even worse than when alive.

Ten minutes later, both lightsabers still held ready, though no further trouble encountered, she made it back to base camp. A large area of rubble had been cleared and compacted to form a broad landing pad. The familiar lines of the _Ebon Hawk_ sat less than a hundred yards away, between a pair of Republic supply freighters. Beyond the landing pad, a row of low pre-fabricated temporary structures had been set up to act as living and operational quarters.

"More Rakghouls?" Zaalbar greeted her with a mournful sounding growl. The towering Wookiee had his bowcaster at the ready as he stood, illuminated by the fierce blue-white glow of an arc lamp. She could see the ornate hilt of Bacca's ceremonial blade rising above his shoulder. Immediately, and with not a small amount of disquiet, she realised that he was waiting specifically for her return.

"When is it ever anything else?" she asked him rhetorically.

"How is it there can be so many of them? We must have slain thousands of the beasts already, yet still there are always more – an endless tide. Where do they all come from?"

Juhani got the distinct impression that Zaalbar's question was equally as rhetorical as her own was, and he would be surprised to get an answer. They fell into stride together.

"I still don't understand why you walk out there alone." A noise, somewhere between rasping sigh and a moan. "This is not the place for a Wookiee. There is no life left here, only ashes."

It was only at this point she realised they were walking towards the Ebon Hawk rather than the living quarters. "Zaalbar?" she asked him questioningly.

"It is Mission. She wants to speak to us. She is . . ." Zaalbar seemed to be struggling for an appropriate explanation. "You will see what she is soon enough I think."

Mission was waiting for them at the top of the Ebon Hawk's boarding ramp, tapping her foot impatiently. "Finally! I was beginning to think I was going to have to send out a search party."

Juhani would have been able to sense her agitation even without the constant giveaway twitching of the young Twi'lek's headtails. "What is wrong, Mission? What happened?"

"You haven't seen the holoNet? No, of course not, you've been out walking all . . ." She glanced at her chrono. ". . . Morning. Revan – I mean Tamar – has escaped! It's been on all the stations. Somebody busted him out of prison! It was Carth and Jolee and HK and the others. I just know it. It has to be them. Nothing else makes any sense. I let you talk me into staying before, Juhani, but not this time. Uh-huh. We have to help them. They need us. They need the _Hawk_. We're going and that's that, absolutely right now."

Juhani's brow furrowed as she struggled to keep up. "Slow down. Tamar has been broken out of prison?" The implications of that were even more difficult to take in than Mission's tumbling stream of words.

Mission threw up her hands. "Yes! Aren't you listening to me? Has everyone round this dump turned into a hopeless nerf-herder while I wasn't looking?"

"See what I mean?" Zaalbar interjected with what for him amounted to a whisper.

"Hey big Z! I thought you were on my side."

"There are no sides here." Juhani stated emphatically as she started up the _Ebon Hawk's_ ramp. "Now try to calm down Mission, and explain to me everything that has happened."

There as an exasperated sigh, which said: _that's what I've been trying to tell you_. She started again, slightly more slowly this time.

". . . And pretty much the entire fleet are on high alert. The price they've put on his head will have every single bounty hunter in the galaxy drooling at the prospect. So you see, we have to help them," she finally finished, a look of frantic appeal on her face.

"And how exactly are we going to do that, Mission?" Juhani asked, gently but firmly.

"Well . . . Er, I haven't quite worked that out yet." She stuck her chin out defiantly. "But I will do. They'll need the _Hawk._ I know they will. We can't just sit here!"

Juhani struggled to sort through her own feelings. Part of her wanted to berate Revan – berate Tamar – _how could you be so stupid?_ _This . . . this just makes you look guilty. What were you thinking? What have you done? _But another part was dangerously in accord with Mission, ready to forget her current duties and charge off right there and then. She had thought she'd finally gotten control of her rashness and her quickness of temper, but obviously not quite as well as she'd let herself believe.

She spoke firmly, with an emphaticness and authority she didn't really feel. "We can't just up and leave. We came to Taris for a purpose, and you agreed with that purpose too, Mission. You asked to come along with us. A Jedi does not just throw down her duty because something personal has come up."

Mission had her hands on her hips. "In case you hadn't noticed, but hey, I'm not a Jedi. None of that 'There is no fun, there is tedium. There is no action, there is sitting around yapping' crap for me, thanks. I'm not having it."

Juhani had difficulty hiding a smile that was probably entirely inappropriate at hearing the Jedi code so casually and thoroughly dismissed. "Mission, if we just charge off blindly we're likely to do as much harm as good. People know the _Hawk_ and Tamar's connection to it. We could just end up leading people to him, even if we do manage to find him somehow." She shook her head. "Maybe the best thing he can do right now is surrender."

"You can't be serious!" Mission's face twisted in an angry scowl. "You think he's guilty, don't you?"

There was a tiny but fatal hesitation. "No . . . no, of course not."

"I don't believe this! How . . . how could you, Juhani? After all that he's done for us. For you. I know what happened. How he saved you from the dark side. How could you even doubt him for a moment? Tell her Big Z!"

"She is right, Mission."

"Wha . . .?" Confusion and betrayal showed on Mission's face.

"I owe him a life debt, and I won't forget that. I am nothing if I do. But Juhani is right. Charging off without a plan is worse than doing nothing at all."

Juhani stepped in quickly, trying to appear firm and resolute. "Listen, both of you. This is what is going to happen. Now, I don't believe for a moment that Tamar played any intentional part in the murder of the Jedi Council, but we still have an obligation to this mission. And we will fulfil it." She held up a hand to forestall Mission's protest. "From this survey point there are perhaps three days worth of sites we still have to investigate for any possible survivors."

"All we'll find is Rakghouls. That's all we ever find. There hasn't been a single survivor located on the whole of Taris for months."

"Mission, don't interrupt. As long as there is any chance of finding anyone else, no matter how minute, none of us are going to give up. Am I clear? Good. So, during these next few days, we will all do our job thoroughly and attentively, but we will also come up with a definite plan of action. After the work at this survey point is done, provided we are agreed, we will make our apologies to Major Ackbar and we won't move on with the rest of the team to the next site. Instead, we'll leave Taris and start looking to help Tamar in whatever manner we are best able to."

Juhani looked from Mission to Zaalbar and back again. "Are we agreed?"

Mission finally nodded unhappily, head tails drooping. "Yeah, we're agreed."

-s-s-

Yuthura's boot heels clicked a staccato rhythm as she strode rapidly across the docking bay of Kinrae spaceport, the tails of her long black coat streaming out behind her until they almost resembled batwings. The look of tightly controlled fury on her face was enough to send all but the bravest or most foolhardy scurrying immediately for cover. The lightsaber displayed openly at her hip would take care of the rest.

A couple of paces behind her, Mandalorian armour gleaming to a mirror-finished sheen, Tamar was a huge, silently looming shadow. A Baragwin assault blade, specially modified by Suvam Tan, was strapped across his back, while a heavy Baragwin repeater was held in readiness across his chest.

Standing waiting for them was a rather worried looking Sith officer flanked by half a dozen Sith troops. As they got nearer, the Sith officer stepped forward to either greet or challenge them.

Yuthura didn't give him the opportunity. "Why is there no honour guard awaiting my arrival?" she demanded the moment he opened his mouth to say something.

His jaw shut with an audible click. The look in his eyes as he took in her appearance and scowl suggested he would suddenly much rather be in the local cantina – approximately anywhere rather than right here, right now. "You are the owner of the . . ." he glanced quickly at the datapad he was holding. "_Ajunta's Blade_? We don't appear to have any record . . ."

"Yes, cretin," she snapped, looking at him in a manner that suggested he was something unpleasant that she'd just trodden in. "The _Ajunta's Blade_ is my ship. And I want to know why there was no one here to meet me. Is Governor Tetrell deliberately trying to insult me, or does he simply employ incompetents?"

"Um . . . perhaps if you could tell me your name, Ma'am? I might be able to sort something out . . ."

Yuthura made a hissing noise that had the unfortunate man flinching back from her. "This is beyond belief. What is your name and rank, officer?"

"Ensign Mascis, ma'am." He managed not to stammer, which was the precise limit of his composure.

"Well Ensign, be grateful that I am in a good mood, and less predisposed to random acts of violence than my predecessor. I am Darth Ban. Perhaps you've heard of me, hmm? Yes? I am here to see Governor Tetrell." She spoke as if talking to a simpleton.

"D-Darth . . ."

"Ban. Would you like me to spell it for you?"

"Um, that won't be necessary. And your travelling companion my, er . . . Lord? For our manifests." He appeared to be willing himself to vanish down a crack in the plastocrete.

She blinked, yellow eyes boring into him. "My travelling companion? What are you blathering about? I am travelling alone."

"Um, but . . . my Lord." He nodded towards Tamar, hulking silently and impassively over her shoulder.

"What part of alone is giving you trouble, Ensign? There is nobody with me."

"The, er . . . Mandalorian behind you," he said with a slightly desperate note in his voice.

Yuthura looked at him incredulously, as if she couldn't believe the stupidity of what she'd just heard. "That is my property, Ensign. Like a droid or a suitcase, if it helps you to comprehend. As I have told you _twice_ already, I am travelling alone."

Ensign Mascis gave up. "Very good, my Lord. Should I send word ahead to Governor Tetrell and arrange transportation . . .?"

"Don't concern yourself about it, I can find my own way, thank you." Dismissing him from her notice, she snapped her fingers at four of the on looking Sith guards in turn. "You, you, you and you. You will escort me to the Governor's offices. Now."

As she strode peremptorily past them, no one had the nerve to say anything, let alone object.

-s-s-

"It is done" Ygress gave a high-pitched warble, his abbreviated left antenna twitching spasmodically as he spoke.

Rath peered past the slender, insectoid Verpine. Beyond him, in the middle of the cargo bay, stood a huge, heavily armoured battlefield droid with what look like a cylindrical metal tank grafted into its chest.

"The ysalmari and its branch fit inside the armoured frontal tank. Environmental conditions are regulated to suit the creature perfectly, and it is shielded against even heavy blaster fire. It has little negative effect on the droid's performance. I have constructed four of them as ordered"

Rath patted the Verpine's hard, chitinous shoulder. "You've done brilliantly. As always." From behind him came a muttered snort. Rath turned around. "You don't seem that impressed, Kreed?"

"This doesn't seem like overkill to you, Rath? For a single Jedi, I mean. I've faced Jedi before, many times. In my experience they die just like anybody else." Kreed was a Mandalorian, or at least the bits of him that were still human were. At some point, he'd lost both legs and his left arm. They'd been replaced with cybernetic limbs. One eye was missing too, a glowing red lens fitted in its socket. Rath knew that he had enough weaponry built into himself to fight – and win – a small war.

"Think of it as a trial run. Proof of tactics. You're the one who's been spouting all these paeans to Revan's greatness and invincibility. I thought you above any of us would appreciate the chance to iron out any operational kinks before we go up against _him_."

Kreed snorted. "There's no honour in using thermal detonators to exterminate krith rats."

"This is about money. Not honour. Get that idea out of your head right now."

"Right." The contempt in the Mandalorian's voice dripped.

"Besides, this Jedi – they say she fought at Revan's side when he took down Darth Malak on the Star Forge. And she's a Cathar. You know very well their reputation as fighters."

"We've been through this before, Rath," Shakrill interrupted with a growl, the big Trandoshan stepping forward from the corner where he'd been lurking. "We all know the plan."

"Then perhaps we'd like to go over it one more time." Rath smiled. "You know, for luck."

Shakrill bared his teeth.

"Humour me." This time Rath's voice was hard – authoritative.

It was Kreed who answered. "We lure them away from the landing pad with a faked distress call. Me, Shak, the brothers and the four battle droids lay in ambush for them. We take out the Cathar, the Wookiee, and any Republic troops accompanying them. While we're doing this, you, Ygress and the others come in and grab the _Ebon Hawk_. Satisfied, Rath? We've done this before. We're actually pretty damn good at it. It's not quantum physics."

"And the Twi'lek?" Rath pressed.

"We try to take her alive, if at all possible, to use against Revan as a hostage." The Mandalorian snorted dismissively. "I think we're capable of dealing with a fifteen year-old Twi'lek girl easily enough, Rath. Don't you?"

-s-s-

"Do you have an appointment?" the receptionist asked with a brittle, artificial smile.

"I have deigned to make time in my schedule to see Governor Tetrell, yes." Yuthura smiled back. Something about the expression made the receptionist blanch.

"Wait, you can't just go . . ."

But Yuthura was already striding past, through the doors behind the reception desk. ". . . in there." The receptionist trailed off lamely, there no longer being anyone to talk to.

The Governor was standing with his back to the door, dictating into a head set as he gazed out of the window that made up one wall of his office. The view it gave was spectacular, overlooking a small mist shrouded valley beyond Kinrae spaceport's walls. He turned around casually at the intrusion, only a slight flicker carried on the Force giving any hint that he was surprised at being disturbed.

"Yuthura," he said after a miniscule, but telling pause. "It has been a long time."

She didn't say anything; just looked at him. The door whispered closed behind Tamar's armoured back. Governor Tetrell was somewhere in his thirties, handsome in a chilly sort of way, with a thin, ascetic face that would always look slightly cruel whatever reality lay behind it.

"It was stupid of you to come here, Yuthura – a wanted traitor. I won't take any pleasure from turning you in, but I think counting the credits of the reward will help me sleep at night."

She still didn't say anything. Instead, she reached out with the Force and yanked his legs out from under him. As he hit the carpet with a thud and muffled grunt she strode forward, planting a boot heel firmly across his throat.

"Yuthura," he gasped, barely able to draw breath. "There is . . . an entire legion of troops . . . in the vicinity. All I have to do is snap my fingers . . ."

She simply peered down at him, tilting her head fractionally to one side, the look in her eyes suggesting she was examining something interesting but vaguely unpleasant in a sample dish. "Canderous, I seem to have trodden in something. I was wondering if you had any idea what it was?"

Tamar, just having finished disabling the security alarm beneath the Governor's desk, made a show of stepping forwards. He peered down at the Governor through the eye slits in his helmet. "Looks like carrion to me," he rasped.

"Yes it does, doesn't it?" She drew her lightsaber, holding it so that if she where to ignite it, its blade would impale Governor Tetrell straight through the face.

"Yuthura, you didn't come here just to kill me . . .." There was a hint of desperation now. He was struggling to breathe because of the pressure of her boot. "I heard that you'd returned to the Jedi . . ."

"I prefer Darth Ban now."

"Darth Ban . . ." He blinked, and it was almost possible to see the workings of his thoughts behind his eyes as he reinterpreted all the rumours and snippets of information he'd heard over the past few days. Suddenly he blanched.

"Yes, I chose to follow the path of the true Lord of the Sith. Not the petty pretenders to his crown." She smiled – bared her teeth – and slightly eased up the pressure on his throat. "I have grown more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

"What do you want from me?" Governor Tetrell managed to seem very nearly calm, despite the fact he was still lying on his back beneath her. He always had been adaptable, she recalled. "I am humbly at your service."

"You're going to make a call to _Darth_ . . ." Stepping back from him she sneered as she pronounced the title, head tails weaving contemptuously. "Auza. He and I are due a chat."

Tetrell gingerly got back to his feet. "What makes you think . . .?"

"Oh, I know you aren't particularly close to Auza," she interrupted him. "But you are allied with him. Part of his court, if only a very peripheral member, and he will take your call if you say it's important. That's all I ask."

"He is not going to be at all pleased if I . . ."

"As an alternative, I'm sure your 'entire legion of troops' will be able to clean up the mess they find when they get here most efficiently."

He grimaced. "I'll need some time."

Yuthura inclined her head. "Why certainly. You know that I've never been an unreasonable person. I'll give you two minutes."

"But . . ."

"You can call him from your desk right now. You do not lose _all_ your brain cells when you gain the title Darth, Governor. I'm still capable of thinking on a somewhat worldly level." She smiled again, cold and sharp and scary. "Now, have you recovered from your memory lapse, or do I have to ask Canderous here to give it a jog?"

"No, no," he hastened, spreading his hands placatingly, then walking behind his desk. "I will . . . see what I can do."

"Gooood." Yuthura drew the word out into a teasingly. "Now, inform Darth Auza that my master has a proposition he wishes me to discuss with him, face to face. A proposition that – if we are calm and adult about it – shall be of great benefit to us all." With deliberate, languid grace, she seated herself opposite the Governor and leant forward, across the desk. "And Governor Tetrell? You can stop pressing the alarm call now. I think it might be broken."

-s-s-

"Fifty yards from this point, around the turn," Zaalbar growled and gestured ahead.

What had once been the undercity of Taris now stood open to the sky – a maze of deep, fragmentary canyons walled by rubble, scotched plastocrete, and warped and twisted metal. It was just barely above freezing point down here, so the filthy, tainted snow melted and ran in poisonous icy cold streams down the canyon walls. The sound of dripping was a constant, maddening accompaniment.

Juhani nodded acknowledgement. Her lightsabers were in hand but not yet ignited. Tension pricked at her. Something she couldn't put her finger on felt . . . wrong.

"There're definitely life signs up ahead. A high concentration of them. Impossible to tell if it's just more Rakghouls or not," Sergeant Horan, a veteran Republic soldier informed her.

"If we just stand here yapping, Rakghouls are all that's gonna be left." Impatience filled Mission's voice. "You heard the distress call, Juhani."

_If they aren't all dead already_. The distress call they'd received twenty minutes earlier had been brief and garbled – a frantic voice speaking galactic basic, and a beacon broadcasting their position. All attempts at raising them again had come up blank, though the beacon was still functioning. There had been a brief hope in her that it might prove to be more survivors from the bombardment, but she knew privately that it was much more likely to be off-world scavengers, looking for loot in this endless city of the dead. Part of her struggled not to make moral judgments, and convince herself that they were just as worth saving as everybody else

"Let's move in carefully, Sergeant," Juhani gave the order.

She still didn't feel entirely comfortable with military command, unable to stop herself privately second guessing every decision that she made; worrying constantly that she was letting her emotions intrude too much, or she was missing some vital detail or other. How other people made it look so effortless she couldn't begin to fathom. It felt as if it was going to turn her fur prematurely grey.

At that moment, the sound of a sporadic burst of blaster fire made the whole decision a lot more clear-cut.

Ahead of them, the twisting canyon opened up into a strange plaza made up of twisted columns that had once been the anchoring roots of vast skyscrapers. The ground was scarred and blasted, and every few tens of metres huge pits opened up, dropping away into fathomless darkness.

The blaster fire came from the plaza's far side; bright intermittent flashes. In the brief instants of illumination it provided she could make out hunched, grey-skinned, loping forms.

The Republic troops fanned out, laying down covering fire, all of them expertly trained veterans of the Sith wars. It was some comfort to Juhani, as she ignited her lightsabers, that they were fully capable of doing exactly the right thing, whatever the competence of her command.

From beside her Zaalbar's bowcaster spat green energy bolts with its distinctive _whine-crack_ note. As she concentrated, she was dimly aware of Mission fading into little more than an ephemeral blur as her stealth field generator kicked in. Only fifteen the Twi'lek might have been, but she was as handy a fighter as any of them, more experienced and skilled than most people twice her age.

The Rakghouls tried to turn and face their new attackers, howling out their rage. Against such well-armed and highly trained opponents it was over quickly though. Less than a minute later, everything was still and quiet, nearly a score of smoking grey-skinned corpses scattered across the ground.

There was no immediate sign of anyone else.

"Is there anybody out there?" Juhani called, extinguishing her glowing blue lightsaber blades. Her voice echoed disconcertingly. All she could hear was the constant dripping and running water. "You sent a distress call. We're here to help you."

No answer.

One of the republic soldiers took a step forward. Blaster fire spat, and he went down with a strangled yelp, struck in the leg.

"Please," Juhani called out. "We're not your enemies."

Again, no hint of a response.

One of the fallen soldier's comrades tried to move towards him, but another blaster shot spat out. This time it missed by inches, striking the ground at his feet and causing him to scramble backwards with a strangled yelp.

"Automated gun turret," Zaalbar indicated with a growl. "Four o'clock."

"If anyone can hear me, switch off your turret." Juhani tried to reach out with the Force to locate any living minds in the vicinity, but she couldn't feel anything except her companions. She wasn't sure if that meant there wasn't anyone out there, or if her companions' proximity was simply drowning everything else out. "I repeat, we're here to help! The Rakghouls are dead!"

Her words echoed, unanswered. The fallen soldier let out a stifled groan of pain, but knew enough not to attempt to move from where he lay.

Mission rematerialised, seemingly from thin air beside her. "No sign of anyone," she reported. "I . . . I think we were to late. Whoever they were, they're probably all dead."

Juhani stifled a sigh, not able to disagree with the assessment. She eyed the turret carefully, plotting an approach route in her head. Taking a deep breath, she drew on the Force, using it to enhance her muscle power and reduce the level of air resistance around her. Then she ignited her lightsabers again and started moving, almost too fast for the eye to follow.

Her lightsaber blades intercepted several incoming shots, deflecting them away. Others missed her rapidly moving form, raising splinters of shrapnel from the ground in her wake. Then she was alongside the turret, still unscathed.

A swift, surgical saber stroke and it died amid a squall of static and the reek of fried electrics. She signalled the all clear to the others.

Zaalbar was the first to come alongside her. "What's that?" he indicated something attached to the foot of the dead turret by a length of chain.

On closer inspection, it turned out to a hefty lump of raw, putrefying meat. It stank, utterly vile. Up until then Juhani had dismissed the foul miasma it was giving off as coming from the dead rakghouls. Now she had to pause to stop herself gagging.

_Why the hell would someone chain raw meat to a gun turret?_

It struck her suddenly. To persuade a group of Rakghouls to attack the turret, and make it look like a pitched battle was taking place. Which meant . . .

A trap.

She was just starting to shout a warning to the others when she went completely blind.

-s-s-

"It is funny how everyone seems to completely lose the power of rational thought when you mention the name Revan," Yuthura commented dryly.

Tamar guided the skyrunner – for now called the _Ajunta's Blade_ – down towards the landing pad of Auza's palace. The roiling walls of dark cloud that surrounded the Eye of Simus flashed with red lightning, but overhead the sky was a calmly pristine shade of azure. The contrast was somehow unsettling on some deep instinctual level.

"You didn't expect this to work," he stated as their spacecraft touched down gently. His voice was distorted slightly by his helmet.

"I . . . not so easily, no." There was a definite tension to her expression as she gazed out at the palace's delicately wrought spires. "I suppose that was always one of Revan's most powerful talents – to inspire awe in those who served him. Malak tried to copy it, I think, but he was too clumsy and all he could ever manage to inspire was fear."

He unsnapped his seat restraints. "Unfortunately it works against us too."

She didn't need to ask what he meant. Without the mythic weight of Revan's name hanging over them like an executioner's blade, perhaps the Republic wouldn't have been so easily convinced of their guilt over the Jedi Council's death. Perhaps they wouldn't be in this position – deep in Sith space with no support.

"Looks like we've got a welcoming committee," Tamar indicated with a nod, swinging himself out of the pilot's seat and standing up. "Two of them. They don't look armed, from here at least."

"You are going to see some very . . . unpleasant things out there," she warned as she followed him. "You can't react to them."

"What do you mean?"

"I explained to you why we couldn't bring T3 – about Auza's paranoia concerning droids."

Tamar chuckled, though there wasn't much humour to it. "Maybe he met HK at some point in the past."

There was something bleak and pained in her eyes. "Instead of droids he uses mind-wiped slaves as servitors and workers . . . and playthings. Some of it . . . it is vile. Last time I was here I had trouble restraining myself from cutting the Hutt-slime down."

"You'll be okay?" he asked quietly.

She took a deep breath and nodded. "I know what to expect. But you should be prepared."

He opened the exit hatch in the skyrunner's belly, lowered the steps, and climbed down, before stopping and standing rigidly at attention. After a slight pause, he heard Yuthura descending after him.

The welcoming party stepped forwards to greet them. Tamar was glad that the helmet was there to cover his surprise. Golden haired and glowing, the man and woman looked to be twins, specimens of flawless human beauty. They wore matching short white tunics that left their tanned, lithely muscular limbs bare.

Tamar didn't miss the lightsabers that each twin wore at their hip. They certainly didn't look like typical dark Jedi, however.

"Greetings . . ."

". . . my Lady."

Both twins bore matching smiles, the female twin starting the sentence and the male twin finishing it for her as they smilingly bowed to Yuthura.

"Welcome to the humble dwelling . . ."

". . . of the Great Darth Auza."

Again, one twin started the sentence and the other finished. Tamar found it rather unsettling, and he could feel the Force looping between the two of them in a manner that was completely different to anything he could ever remember sensing before.

"I trust that your journey . . ."

". . . was not too tiresome?"

"It was passable, thank you." Yuthura's voice held cool disdain. If the twins disturbed her in any way, it didn't show.

"I am . . ."

". . . glad."

"However I was given to understand . . ."

". . . you would be travelling alone."

"And so I am. Canderous here is merely my servitor. I'm sure that Lord Auza fully understands the concept."

The twins inclined their heads as one, perfectly synchronised in their movements, apparently content to let the matter rest. Tamar didn't miss how they referred to themselves using a singular pronoun. "Quarters have been . . ."

". . . prepared for you."

"Would you like . . ."

". . . to freshen up?"

"I would rather meet with Lord Auza as soon as possible," Yuthura answered. "The business I bring before him is of pressing urgency."

Again, the twins inclined their heads, almost a bow this time. For all their politeness, Tamar noted that they pointedly refused to use the title 'Darth Ban', which could potentially be construed as an insult – or at least a test. If Yuthura was to mention it in the face of their otherwise scrupulous politeness, it risked looking petty and insecure. On the other hand letting it slide entirely might seem like weakness.

"If you would . . ."

". . . follow me please."

"Darth Auza is . . ."

". . . currently dining."

"He would be most happy . . ."

". . . for you to join him."

"That would be . . . adequate." Yuthura gestured with both hand and head tail. "Please, lead the way."

The twins linked hands as they turned away from them. For some reason that tiny, innocent gesture, made Tamar's skin crawl. He could sense the intricate weaves of Force flowing between the two of them suddenly intensify.

The landing pad was effectively a floating island, connected to the rest of the palace by a gracefully arching bridge. Crossing it gave the slightly bizarre illusion that the fluffy white cloud tops of Dantalus VI's atmosphere formed a gently flowing river beneath them. One in which you could dive in and swim . . .

Delicate, gilded gates swung open soundlessly as they approached them, admitting them into the palace itself. They walked for many minutes, and the route they took seemed designed specifically to show off the palace's many and varied splendours to maximum advantage – lush, exotically landscaped gardens; sunlit galleries, gracefully pillared and filled with artwork from a dozen varied cultures; transparent floored walkways that gave the sensation of walking directly on the cloud tops.

Through it all Tamar didn't spot a single hint of a Sith uniform or an armed guard. All he saw were the slaves that Yuthura had warned him about.

Most he only glimpsed from a distance, elegant but listless looking humans and Twi'leks attired in similar manner to the twins, but wearing metal collars. A trio of lovely, violet-skinned Zeltrons, however, he passed at closer range. It was a struggle to hide his shock, and he was grateful that his helmet concealed his reaction.

They were utterly blank, whatever was left of their minds making less impression on the Force than the average insect. They seemed to have been reduced to the status of decorous biological sculptures.

He felt a flash of deep and profound anger from Yuthura, but outwardly, she didn't react at all. Then another set of gates were opening up before them and they had reached their destination.

-s-s-

At least, Juhani's initial feeling was that she'd gone blind.

She had never realised quite how much the Force had come to be such an integral part of her existence, until suddenly it was gone. One moment she was subliminally aware of everyone around her – Zaalbar, Mission, Sergeant Horan and the other Republic troops – the next, there was . . . nothing. In the initial instants, before her eyesight and hearing informed her otherwise, her mind was more willing to believe that somehow, they'd all just vanished rather than she'd somehow lost the ability to sense them.

Four titanic battle droids – similar in some respects to the latest Sith prototype models, but considerably larger and heavily modified – rose on repulsorlifts from the gaping black pits in the fractured ground they'd so blithely walked past moments earlier. Juhani strained hard to reach the Force, convinced that the failing must be in her somehow – that if she tried hard enough she could overcome it. The alternative seemed inconceivable.

She came up empty though. The battle droids opened fire indiscriminately.

Most of the Republic soldiers were still turning to face the threat when they were unceremoniously scythed down by a rapid crossfire of heavy blaster fire. Juhani saw Mission blink out of view as she activated her stealth unit, Zaalbar, Horan and several other survivors scrambling desperately for cover behind broken pillars.

A blaster bolt passed close enough by Juhani's face to scorch the fine covering of fur on her cheek. Suddenly she was scrambling for cover with the others, heart thudding, adrenaline coursing through her veins. Without being able to sense the blaster shots being fired through the Force, she couldn't even begin to parry them with her lightsabers. In fact, her lightsabers felt entirely useless in her grasp, liable to do more harm to herself than any opponent. Her breath came in short gasps as she struggled to fight off the disorienting panic that was trying to claim her.

A republic soldier shrieked as one of the battle droids bathed his scant cover in a mass of roiling flame, springing up and running frantically as he was transformed into a blazing human torch. The hail of blaster fire that halted his wildly erratic progress was almost a mercy.

Zaalbar bellowed as a blaster bolt hit him in the shoulder, but it took far more than a single blaster shot to drop an angry Wookiee. He responded with a volley of bolts from his bowcaster as on of the battle droids moved in on him, but the attacks bounced harmlessly off its energy shields. Growling deep in his chest, Zaalbar switched to Bacca's blade and charged in swinging.

As another of the droids closed in on her position, Juhani was aware of an assault sled rising from another of the pits, spilling in the region of half a dozen troops to back-up the attacking droids. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to act, able to see all too clearly that if the odds didn't change dramatically they were going to be completely overwhelmed within seconds.

She rolled from cover, blaster fire chewing up the ground behind her and stinging her with shards of plastocrete shrapnel. Without thinking about it, she threw her off-hand saber at the attacking droid, aiming for its leg joints.

Except she couldn't use the Force to either propel it, or guide it back to her hand. The lightsaber's blue blade struck the droid almost where she'd aimed, but it just bounced off its shields with a harsh cracking sound and tumbled the floor, extinguishing as one of its crystals jarred out of alignment.

Pain exploded in her thigh as a blaster shot hit her. Her leg buckled beneath her, sending her sprawling. Gritting her teeth as searing agony flared through her, she forced herself to roll, staying just fractionally ahead of several more blaster shots designed to finish her off. She just about managed to avoid impaling herself on her remaining lightsaber as she did so.

She came up alongside the droid, half-snarling and half crying-out as she swung her lightsaber. This time she managed to penetrate the shields, the lightsaber blade cutting into the metal of its leg. Before she could tell what damage she'd inflicted, a flailing metal arm, solid as a steel girder, struck her in the side of the head and sent her sprawling.

Blackness sucked at her. The sound of roaring blood in her ears drowned out even the cacophony of the nearby battle. Only raw determination kept her from sliding into unconsciousness. Another blaster shot clipped her side, spinning her over, but she scarcely noticed, hauling herself back to her feet through sheer bloody-minded willpower.

It was only when yet another blaster shot fractured the ground between her feet that she realised she was teetering dangerously close to one of the pits. Abruptly there was a sharp cracking, splintering noise and the ground beneath her was gone.

She was too surprised to even cry out, tumbling silently into blackness.

-s-s-

Darth Auza – Auza the Hutt.

Tamar looked at the huge, corpulent figure sprawled on his red velvet and gold throne, and tried to hide his distaste. The mass off clear tubes connecting into the Sith Lord's flesh gurgled softly as they drained and fed fluid into and out of his vast bulk. Standing next to him, proffering various trays of foodstuffs at Auza's indication, was a collared Twi'lek slave. Her mind was every bit as blank and empty as the Zeltrons. She was violet skinned, the same racial grouping as Yuthura, and though she was somewhat softer and fuller looking than her, the intended message – and insult – was clear enough.

"Yuthura," Auza exclaimed between devouring small pink, crustacean-like foodstuffs. "You're looking . . . particularly svelte and deadly. It's been what? Two years?"

"Nearer two and a half," she answered, frowning.

"It seems less. Truly it does." He made a gesture with his free hand, and in that moment looked exactly like the Hutt he was nicknamed for. "Please take a seat." He indicated a pair of chairs arranged in front of him. "Your big . . . Mandalorian friend too."

"Canderous can stand," she said dryly as she arranged herself in one of the chairs. "One doesn't let the kath hounds on the furniture, does one?"

Auza let out a vile, burbling chuckle. "Indeed one does not." He was looking at Tamar with an intense, disconcerting curiosity. "Interesting. Canderous, you say . . .? How . . . curious." He started to frown.

Yuthura tapped a gleaming black jewel set in the front of her headpiece at the centre of her forehead, her lips twisting wryly. "I like to be sure I hold a proper degree of control over my . . . servants. I'm sure you know what I mean, _Lord Auza_." The last two words contained a subtly ironic twist.

Finally, Auza dragged his dark, malevolent eyes away from Tamar, his curiosity apparently satisfied. "Of course." He gave a ghastly looking smile. "Are you hungry after your flight, Yuthura? You must be. I'll have Celyanda fetch you something."

"Celyanda?"

Auza indicated the twins.

"Thank you for the kind offer, but I'd sooner we got down to business."

"Business. Yes, yes. I suppose we must." Auza sighed wistfully. "Sometimes I can't help but think we Sith have our priorities slightly skewed. What purpose this constant striving for power if we can't stop from time to time to simply enjoy it?"

"But there is always more power to be had, just within reach. And it always so very tempting."

Auza chuckled again. "Perhaps Yuthura, that is why you are so very slim, and I am so very fat." He made another gesture to the twins. "Please Celyanda, leave us for now."

Tamar heard the twins' footsteps moving away in perfect unison. Auza was apparently content to keep the twi'lek slave with them, occasionally passing another tray his way.

"Celyanda?" Yuthura asked. "Two separate beings that have one name between them?"

Auza smiled condescendingly. "Two beings? No Yuthura, surely you felt it? Celyanda is but a single entity."

Behind the mask of his helmet, Tamar blinked in surprise. But now it was said it seemed so utterly obvious.

"How does that come about?" Yuthura asked, apparently sharing his curiosity.

"They used to be separate individuals, just like you and me. Cel Ungwin and Yanda Danthir, there names were once."

Yuthura frowned. "Not twins? I thought it was customary for human siblings to share the same family name?"

Another indulgent chuckle. "Oh, they're not twins. Not even remotely related in fact. At one time they looked completely unalike, I do believe." Auza seemed to be warming to the subject. "They used to be Jedi – a pair of extremely promising young Knights from Ossus. Of course, that was more than forty years ago."

"Forty years?"

"Well preserved aren't they? Somehow they tap into and augment each others life energies, and that keeps the aging process at bay." Auza moved on from the pink crustaceans to what looked like fish eggs smeared on small triangles of toasted bread. "If only I could find a way to duplicate the process. Think of the potential. But alas, the intricacies still evade me."

"So how did they come to be like _that_?" Yuthura asked after a slight pause, watching Auza shovel more food into his mouth with sick fascination.

Auza gave a vast shrug that was reminiscent of a landslide of rippling flesh. "Some kind of bond formed between the two of them. They were lovers, and so great was their love that they sought to join together through the Force as well as simply through the flesh. Sweet, isn't it? It brings a warm glow to my heart, just thinking about it.

"As their bond grew deeper they started to withdraw from the outside world, their separate personalities becoming slowly subsumed into a single whole, and even their physical appearance becoming gradually homogenised. Their Jedi Masters became more and more concerned by what they were seeing, and eventually it was decided that the two of them should be split up for their own good, before the 'damage' they were doing to each other became irrevocable.

"Cel and Yanda didn't see it that way, of course. They saw it as if their masters were trying to slice them in two – to callously and brutally murder them, for that was how separation would be. So they fought back. Six Masters and twelve Knights and Padawans perished at their hands before they fled together from Ossus."

Auza smiled. "Such a poignant tragedy, don't you think? I was . . . touched by their plight. How could I do anything else but take them in and protect them from the Jedi Order's callous injustice? And now, as you see, their joining has become complete, as has their happiness."

"I hadn't thought you such a humanitarian, Lord Auza."

"Oh, one does ones best." He gave a low, rumbling laugh that was reminiscent of something stirring deep inside an active volcano. "Of course, my reasons were not _entirely_ selfless."

"Of course," Yuthura murmured.

"You see, Celyanda is the single most powerful Force user I have ever encountered. And I have met both Exar Kun and Darth Revan."

Yuthura didn't look particularly impressed or worried by the revelation, externally at least. "And that doesn't concern you at all? If, as you imply, they are more powerful than you?"

Another gruesome smile. "If they were Sith like you or I – grasping, ambitious creatures that we are – I might be slightly troubled. But all Celyanda wants is the chance to revel in their oneness and explore their inner self. They have no external ambitions at all. Indeed, I think the external world exists to them only as a mildly distracting intrusion, like a half-remembered dream that refuses to fade entirely away. They are quite content to heed my benevolent advice and guidance in all external matters."

"Handy that," Yuthura said softly. "But we are not here to discuss Celyanda, are we? Shall we move on to the matter in hand?"

"Yes. To business, then." Auza's eyes hardened dangerously as he looked at her. "I believe you murdered a good friend of mine."

-s-s-

Zaalbar let loose a thunderous howl as the droid he was attacking collapsed face-forwards with an echoing crash. The Wookiee had been hit by at least three more blaster shots during the battle, patches of his fur burnt black, but he was still standing, and still – seemingly – unimpaired.

Kreed couldn't help but be impressed as he looked on. Even a Mandalorian would be hard pressed to emulate such feats.

As he watched through his artificial eye – capable of seeing far beyond the visible spectrum – he saw Shakrill, cloaked by a stealth field, come up behind the Wookiee, seeking to take him unawares with a pair of matching vibroblades at the ready.

At the last moment, Zaalbar obviously sensed something, whirling around and parrying a stroke that would have decapitated him had it hit. Snarling the two off them faced off, swinging at each other furiously.

The rest of the battle all but over, Kreed allowed himself simply to enjoy the spectacle. The two – Wookiee and Trandoshan – simply hammered at each other. There was almost no subtlety involved: simply raw fury and bludgeoning power. Blow after blow rained in, vibroblade clashing with vibroblade, sparks flying.

Gradually the effects of Zaalbar's wounds seemed to tell on him, and he was slowly driven back, Shakrill manoeuvring the Wookiee remorselessly towards one of the gaping pits.

At the brink, though, Zaalbar somehow seemed to find one more last well of strength to draw upon. One of Shakrill's vibroblades went flying from his grasp. Then the Trandoshan was driven down onto one knee.

Kreed sighed to himself. As much as a part of him would almost enjoy watching the sadistic reptilian being cut down, there were other superseding considerations. As Zaalbar started another swing, he raised his weapon arm and casually shot the Wookiee in the chest.

Zaalbar staggered back with the impact, and, howling in surprise and fear, overbalanced backwards, tumbling into the pit.

The cry of outrage from close by took Kreed by surprise. Mission Vao, he realised, cursing beneath his breath as he span. He'd let his attention wander from her whilst watching Shakrill and Zaalbar do battle.

A barrage of blaster fire hit in him in the cybernetic half of his torso, making him stagger, but doing little more than superficial damage, melting the titanium surface but not penetrating to the combination of components and internal organs that lay beneath. He caught a blur of motion as the Twi'lek darted in at him, her stealth field fading. Something hit him hard in the side and there was a grinding sound of tearing metal. Lashing out, his titanium-reinforced fist caught her in the side of the head and sent her sprawling.

Damage telltales flashed warningly in his head. He looked down, feeling surprise as he saw the almost delicate looking vibroblade that was embedded, hilt deep in him. A few inches to one side and it would have pierced a power cell.

That would have been . . . nasty. As it was, nothing critical had been severed or pierced.

Gritting his teeth, he gripped its hilt, turning the blade's power off, before trying to withdraw it. At first, it wouldn't budge, but he persisted. After several seconds, it slowly slid free of him with a harsh, grating, scraping noise.

"Ouch," he commented to no one in particular.

A roaring sound filled Kreed's ears and he looked up. The bulk of a light freighter that could only be the _Ebon Hawk_ was descending into the plaza, about a hundred yards from his position. _Nice of you to show up just when all the fighting's done, hey Rath?"_

Something moved in the periphery of his vision. Mission had groggily pulled herself to her feet again, blood trickling down the side of his face. Her eyes were filled with hard, bitter fury.

Tough girl, he noted. By rights, she should have been unconscious.

Suddenly her stealth field snapped on again and she dashed away from him, towards the Ebon Hawk. Still able to see her clearly because of his artificial eye, he started loping after her, not in any particularly urgency. She couldn't get away now.

As she reached the Ebon Hawk's ramp, she seemed to realise this.

_If your friends are dead, girl, who's piloting it? _He almost felt sorry for her as he came up behind her. It didn't stop him from punching her in the head again, this time making sure she was properly unconscious.

Sighing to himself, he bent down and scooped her limp form up in his arms.

-s-s-

"It is the Sith way," Yuthura responded calmly and with apparent disinterest. "When the student grows strong enough she replaces her master. It is the thing that stops us from stagnating, like the Republic and the Jedi. You know that as well as I."

"Perhaps," Auza allowed.

"Besides, it was not me who killed him."

Darth Auza stared at her, suddenly very different, the earlier almost bonhomie utterly gone, replaced by something utterly malevolent. Tamar was suddenly on a knife-edge of readiness. "You are sticking with your claim of being the apprentice of Revan then?"

"You don't believe me?" Yuthura asked coldly, matching him every inch of the way. "Why did you let me come here if not?"

"Perhaps your audacity tickled something in me. Perhaps I simply saw the opportunity to avenge my _good friend_, Uthar. You are long way from help and safety, little girl, all alone in a very dark and dangerous place."

Yuthura shrugged, apparently unperturbed by the abrupt change in tone. "You'll find that I am not entirely without resource, should it come to that."

"It will take more than a Mandalorian bodyguard to get you out of here alive, girl." He looked to Tamar, and suddenly the charm was back is if it had never gone away. "No offence to you. I have full respect for the warriors of Mandalore, and their particular philosophy."

Tamar grunted, and did his best gruff-voiced Canderous impression. "Sith and Jedi blood looks just the same as everybody else's. They die just the same when you spill it, and I've spilled entire lakes."

Auza laughed uproariously. "I would expect no less, my friend. I would expect no less." The note of his voice altered slightly, becoming almost a purr. "My association with the people of Mandalore goes back many years. Did you know that? In fact you might say with total accuracy that the war between the Republic and your people was down to me."

Tamar remained silent.

Auza apparently wanted a reaction. "What do you say to that, Mandalorian?"

"If it is true, then I thank you."

"You thank me?" Auza sounded amused, and more than a little surprised.

"The fight is all that matters, win or lose. And that was most glorious fight in our history. I was proud to be a part of it."

Auza chuckled. "And now you claim to serve the man who defeated you. Ah, the delicious ironies of life." The Sith Lord's gaze snapped abruptly back to Yuthura. "And so we are back to Revan. I had heard that he had been mind-wiped and remade as a loyal servant of the Jedi order. I had also heard that you had chosen to return to the light, and the Sith had placed a traitor's price upon your head."

"Yes, I had heard that too," Yuthura answered coolly. "I have heard of a lot of strange things of late. I have heard how Darth Revan has single-handedly slain the Jedi Council on Coruscant, with me standing at his side. Who can begin to know what to believe?"

There was a flicker in Auza's eyes that Tamar read as doubt and unease. It was quickly covered over again. "Funnily enough, my apprentice has an interesting take on that particular tale."

Yuthura burst out laughing with seemingly genuine and heartfelt amusement, her head tails writhing to reflect the emotion. "That was your apprentice? Let me guess – she has claimed credit for the council's demise herself? I don't blame her, I suppose. In her place I might have tried to do the same, I'll admit. Who wouldn't? My master was quite impressed with her – despite the fact she tried to kill him."

Auza didn't say anything, simply looking at Yuthura intently. Tamar got the impression that his confidence with the situation was slowly seeping away, like air from a punctured balloon. Which could be either good for them, or very, very bad, depending on exactly what sort of person Auza was.

"Is she here? I'd quite like to meet her again." Yuthura gave a sharp smile. "Just to let her know that I don't bear any grudges."

"And I am to believe that you have less reason to lie to me than my own apprentice?"

"I have no reason to try and impress you. And I haven't just failed in my appointed task."

Finally, Auza seemed to lose his appetite. "Let's get to the point shall we? What are you – no, what is _Revan_ – offering me? So far, we simply seem to be fencing around to little purpose. And I do hate fencing so soon after a meal."

Yuthura sat back, ostentatiously crossing her legs. "Darth Malefic," she stated simply.

Auza made a vague waving gesture. "An ignoramus. His proper position is standing at my right hand. Wearing a collar and serving me canapés. A state of affairs that will shortly be the case."

"Really?" Yuthura arched an eyebrow. "I'm betting he says similar things about you. But eight months on from Malak's death and you're both still locked together in conflict, squabbling for supremacy. The Republic is on its knees, their Jedi protectors in a state of utter disarray. Yet the Sith are utterly incapable of taking advantage. Face it, neither you nor Malefic will ever rule while the true Dark Lord is still out there."

"So that is your offer: serve Revan. Not much of a sales pitch, I must say."

"I would call it . . . more of an alliance. You stood with Revan once. You were the one to first declare him Dark Lord, or so I have heard. You can do so again . . . and Malefic can be yours sooner than you might think." She smiled. "Right here, serving canapés."

Auza made a wet, snorting sound. "Let's say I choose to believe you – that you are Revan's chosen apprentice, and he himself seeks to regain his throne. I still don't see the advantage to me. He is but one man, with no great army at his back this time. No, I am minded to think that Revan is of the past – just as Malak is."

"One man who slew the Jedi council on Coruscant. One man whose name the Sith will flock to. And I think you underestimate the strength he already possesses. He is far stronger than he ever was before." She leant forward slightly in her seat, fixing him with her opal-coloured eyes. "When it becomes known that he has truly returned, the Sith will inevitably flock to his banner from yours and Malefic's sides, and those who opposed him will pay a price." Her lips twitched in a half-smile. "Do you really want to stand against him – the man who destroyed Darth Malak in the heart of his own fortress, surrounded by all the hordes of the infinite fleet? You are brave indeed, Lord Auza – or do you believe that Celyanda keeps you safe?"

Auza almost looked to be pouting, his mouth hideously wet. "I shall require some proof of what you say – of Revan's intent. Call it a token of good faith, if you will."

Yuthura inclined her head. "As you say. Might I enquire what form this token is to take?"

"I shall have to think on it. It is not a spur of the moment decision. If that is all? I'll have Celyanda escort you to your quarters. It has been a heavy lunch, and I grow weary." Auza looked away from her to the Twi'lek slave who had earlier been serving him food. "This here, by the way, is Nathalya."

Suddenly Tamar felt Auza touching the Force, directing a thread of it towards the slave.

"Was Nathalya," he amended.

A series of micro-charges embedded in the collar Nathalya wore beeped and then detonated with a noise like a dozen firecrackers going off. They ripped out her throat, almost severing her head completely in the process. She collapsed limply backwards, arterial blood spraying copiously as her life was casually extinguished.

"I have decided what I want from Revan to seal our alliance." As Auza spoke, Tamar found himself staring at the Twi'lek's corpse in numb horror. He could feel Yuthura's shock and fury at the casually brutal murder, barely contained. The sound of two sets of footsteps approaching from behind in perfect unison told him that there game was up, and he drew on the Force in readiness, no longer caring that it would give him away.

"What I want from Revan is a replacement Twi'lek dancing girl." Auza's voice was hard and cold. "Handily enough I see one sitting right here in front of me who fits the bill just perfectly. I'm sure he'll not object to me taking her. In fact, I think that's probably why he sent her in the first place."

Tamar heard a pair of lightsabers igniting behind him with a _snap-hiss_. He was already spinning round, drawing the Baragwin assault blade from his back and striking, faster than the eye could follow. Yuthura was just as prepared for the betrayal, and just as quick.

But Celyanda matched them, their blades clashing together to no advantage.

"Revan!" Auza's sudden, startled yelp of recognition as he felt the Force flowing strongly through 'Canderous' was very nearly a squeal of terror. Instantly a force shield snapped on, cutting off the side of the chamber containing his throne. A fraction of a second later the floor opened up and Auza's throne retracted rapidly into it as he made good his escape.

Left alone by the fleeing Sith Lord, Tamar, Yuthura and Celyanda faced off.

-s-s-

Consciousness returned slowly to Juhani. She almost wished it hadn't. The pain that came with it made oblivion seem much the preferable option.

It was a while, as she lay there – unmoving in an effort to keep the pain to a merely agonising level – before she realised that she could feel the Force around her again. She was too weak to do much more than simply sense its presence, but even that was comforting to some degree – to know that it was not gone from her forever.

Gradually her awareness managed to extend itself beyond the range of her damaged body.

There was a noise – a skittering, scraping sound. It repeated again, and again, and seemed to come from several places around her. Gradually her brain forced itself to stir – Mission; Zaalbar; the pain of that realisation made the multitude of physical hurts seem trivial. Groaning, she forced herself to lift her head though the effort almost made her black out again.

Her eyes adjusted slowly to the tiny amount of illumination. A human would have been completely blind in this degree of darkness, but her mirrored retinas were able to pick up and amplify the tiny threads of light just enough so she was able to see – albeit in colourless gradations of shadow.

Something moved nearby.

Her sense of the Force suddenly became more acute, and she realised that she was not alone. Mad, twisted, pain-wracked things full of aching, desperate hunger. Rakghouls. A lot of them. All around her.

Gritting her teeth against the multitude of agonies, she forced herself to rise onto hands and knees, ignoring the fact that she was doing herself more damage in the process. The circle of Rakghouls closed in, all but silently.


	4. Sea of Madness

**4. Sea of Madness**

The Force swirled with raging tides of insanity.

Bastila could feel the echoes of recent, violent death like spreading ripples on a pond – thousands upon thousands of deaths. That echo of death wasn't the worst of it though. There was also an oily, whispering taint that spoke directly to the darkness inside her. She couldn't, consciously, understand the words being said, but they set her teeth on edge and left her wanting to scream – to bury her head in her hands and weep.

At her side, Zikl was silent and tense. The Nautolan's green skin looked paler than usual, slightly greasy. Through the Force, she was aware of his uncertainty. Perversely, she found his discomfort almost comforting, though another part of her hated herself for that; the bitter pettiness of it.

"Manarb Station should be there in front of us," Captain Rafe Organa was saying, his voice tight. The view screen in front of them was resolutely blank, save for the yellow-green arc of Manarb V – a sickly looking methane gas giant.

"Hate to break it to you Captain, but it ain't." Canderous's reply was typically sour.

"Sir, we've picked up an entry wake," one of the bridge officers on sensor duty stated.

"The station?" Organa didn't wait for a response, able to fill in the answer well enough for himself. "Centre on it."

Abruptly the gas giant grew to fill their entire view, its atmosphere a mass of swirling storm patterns, all in noxious shades of yellow, green and brown. They zoomed in on a particularly turbulent patch that looked almost bruised, darker than the surrounding cloud.

"There, sir. Sensors detect traces of metals consistent with Republic hull materials several hundred kilometres deep."

"Could it still be intact?"

"Er, sir?" The officer sounded slightly sick. "All that we're picking up is fragments. The rest of it must be too deep for sensors to register. At that pressure and turbulence, and the radiation levels it would be experiencing . . .. There's not a chance, sir."

Manarb relay and supply station had been home to getting on for six thousand Republic fleet, intelligence and research personnel. Although it was hardly the busiest waypoint in the Republic, at any one time it was still likely to have somewhere in the region of a dozen ships, ranging from heavy cruisers to light military transports and medical vessels, in dock.

And all that was left were trace fragments.

"We're picking up debris from a Corellian heavy frigate, sir," another of the deck officers interjected. "Out beyond the third moon. Wait a moment; they're life rafts . . . seven of them. The signal from their tracking beacons indicates that the ship was the _Klatooine Junction_."

"Seven life rafts?" A Corellian heavy frigate had a typical operational complement of three thousand. A life raft could, at a push, hold eight.

"Seven is all we're picking up. If there're more then their tracking beacons aren't functioning, sir."

A grimace twisted the Captain's face. A standard Republic tracking beacon was designed to be near indestructible, with enough life in its power cells to operate it non-stop for close on ten-thousand years. Realistically, if a tracking beacon had stopped functioning, it was because the life raft it was attached to had been utterly destroyed. "Bring us round to pick them up, Mr. Andalo."

"Aye, captain."

Organa turned to face Bastila. "Your thoughts?" he asked her quietly, voice and expression neutral. She could sense a kind of grim hurt from him, as if he regarded what had happened here as being on some level a personal failure.

She struggled to locate something within herself that approximated to composure. "We continue to need advice from the Jedi Masters, Captain. We _have_ to know what was taken from the pirate asteroid."

"You don't think that what happened here takes precedence?"

The Force disturbance continued to call to her; a demented siren song. "This is part of the same thing, Captain Organa." She hesitated, moistening lips that felt painfully dry, but the sense – the premonition almost – she was getting through the taint-infected Force remained almost unbearably strong. "This is just the start of it."

-s-s-

They were overmatched. Badly overmatched.

Tamar parried the flurry of lightsaber blows that rained in, as he'd parried all the countless flurries that had come before it. He could feel his breath starting to come hard and fast, the Baragwin assault blade seeming much heavier in his grasp than it had even a few seconds earlier. His attempt at a counterattack was brushed aside with contemptuous ease.

Very soon, they were going to progress to being fatally overmatched.

If it had simply been a matter of two one-on-one lightsaber duels, it might have been different. One-on-one, against one half of Celyanda, he would even have been confident of his abilities. But like this . . .

A single entity with two bodies perfectly attuned to one another. It was difficult to truly grasp the implications until you saw it; until you faced it. They blocked and parried for each other in perfect split second unison, creating a defence that was, to all intents of purposes, utterly impenetrable. Their attacks came seemingly from every angle at once, coordinated to the nth degree. It wasn't teamwork. It was far beyond, that – a left hand and a right hand working in perfect harmony. Only the wonders of Verpine prototype shield technology had prevented him and Yuthura being cut down in the first few seconds, before they'd come to terms with exactly what they were up against.

Those shields were long faded now, ripped to shreds by repeated assaults.

Simultaneous attacks from each half of Celyanda had Tamar retreating desperately. A searing white lightsaber blade crept through his defences, its tip scorching a black-edged gash through his Mandalorian armour. Near miraculously it missed the flesh underneath. Yuthura came across to block, stabilising the situation slightly, but he was panting hard now. The sense he got from her was that she was equally close to the end of her tether, operating solely on sheer iron strength of will.

They'd tried to work the twin halves of Celyanda apart, so that they couldn't reinforce each other so readily, but it had proved impossible. Celyanda was the one controlling the fight, not them. And they were the ones being manoeuvred.

He parried a saber-stroke aimed at Yuthura's undefended side, then narrowly ducked underneath a strike that would have taken his head off. A near miss drew a soot black stain across the surface of his breastplate. Beside him, Yuthura gave a strangled yelp as she lost a shoulder plate and a layer of skin.

Another couple of paces forced retreat. It was an odd feeling, knowing that you were losing a fight where the stake was your life. It wasn't quite fear. It wasn't quite anything he could explain. Another backward step and the chair Yuthura had been sitting in was directly behind him, blocking him off.

Gritting his teeth, he launched a flurried attack designed to break the momentum of Celyanda's remorseless advance. It earned him another hole in his armour, but adrenaline covered over any pain. Then he leapt backwards. He landed on the chair's back and pivoted over on it, before kicking it up – straight into the male half of Celyanda's face.

Celyanda's lightsaber sliced the chair apart before it could hit, but Tamar was able to take advantage of the brief distraction, Force pushing him backwards. He slammed hard into a vine-covered pillar. Immediately Tamar launched himself at Celyanda's other half in a near-frenzied assault, desperate to make the brief advantage tell.

Alongside him, he was aware of Yuthura manipulating the Force, animating the vines around the pillar and wrapping Celyanda's male half tightly in place.

Celyanda's female half retreated before him rapidly as he pressed her hard. Even singularly, she was a master swordswoman, but Tamar was bigger, stronger, just as skilled, and driven by desperation to finish things while the opportunity was still there. He worked her defences this way and that, his focus a white-hot iron core, driving her before him. A parry off a particularly brutal hack left a minute opening and he seized upon it instantly, following up to score a vicious looking wound in her shoulder.

She cried out in pain. Blood spurted and bone crunched. Her twin screamed in unison, a matching wound appearing in his flesh, blood blossoming to stain his pristine white tunic . . .

Then both wounds closed over, healing completely in an instant.

Shock made the momentum of Tamar's attack falter. He narrowly twisted away from a series of deft saber strokes directed at him in counter. Suddenly there was blazing heat on the side of his face. Sweat poured down his neck. His skin felt as if it was on the verge of blistering.

It was a ball of raw plasma – an incandescent miniature sun – materialised in midair in front of Celyanda's vine wrapped half. Celyanda's female half disengaged from him during his brief instant of distraction, somersaulting backwards through the air to safety.

As Celyanda hurled the plasma ball towards Tamar, Yuthura shoved him hard with the Force. He gave a choked cry of surprise as he went sprawling, head over heels.

The plasma ball shrieked through the space he'd just been occupying as he tumbled out of its path. It burned through the base of another vine-entangled pillar, then disappeared on through a wall, vaporising a neat circle through solid marble. The air boiled and fizzed angrily in its wake.

Tamar came back to his feet. Fire almost as hot as the plasma ball seemed to be burning in his muscles from lactic acid build-up. Breathing in, the air was still hot in his throat, scorching it raw. Little tremors that he couldn't completely stop were passing through his shoulders and down his arms, his sword blade wavering.

A harsh cracking sound came from the damaged pillar directly behind him.

It toppled over, its fall steered towards him by Celyanda's will. Twisting round frantically, he held his hand up in front of his face and caught it using the Force. He could hear his teeth grinding and squeaking together as he gritted them against the sudden strain.

Celyanda's male body was free again, the vines withering and falling loose the moment Yuthura's focus left him. Both halves now stood side by side once more, separated from them by about twenty feet. Their incandescent white lightsabers were held at the ready. They resembled beautiful golden angels of vengeance and destruction.

"Run?" Yuthura suggested, her voice strained, as she looked at them. The violet blade of her lightsaber trembled fractionally from fatigue.

"Run," Tamar agreed with a nod. Groaning with the effort, he picked up the pillar – a ton or so of solid masonry – and hurled it directly towards Celyanda as they started to advance.

-s-s-

Juhani had nowhere left to retreat to.

She'd tried to locate one of her lightsabers in the gloom, but she hadn't been able to sense it anywhere within range of her pain addled thoughts. As the Rakghouls drew closer, the putrid half-rotten scent of them strong in her nostrils, she bared her teeth, nascent claws sliding from their finger sheaths. Fighting down the pain of multiple injuries – blaster burns; cuts and bruises; possibly even broken bones – she drew upon the Force, augmenting her battered muscles and reflexes in readiness to fight.

Even wounded as badly as she was, she would ensure they would not find her easy prey. The calm serenity that settled over her didn't seem entirely rational.

A thunderous bellow echoed from close by. Something flew through the air, slamming into a plastocrete wall with a horribly wet, mushy sounding thud. The impact was hard enough that it left a dark smear behind, and the missile flopped to the ground. Another Rakghoul, she saw, this one reduced to a misshapen sack of splintered bones.

There was another bellow. Zaalbar, her brain belatedly filled in.

Through the Force she could feel the Wookiee's mind, half-mad with rage as he charged forward, attacking in berserker frenzy. Rakghouls twisted away from her to face the new threat. Bacca's blade sundered flesh and bone with equal ease, tainted black blood splattering like hot tar.

Several of the Rakghouls still decided to lunge at her, for all the danger from the other direction. Hissing, both as threat and against the pain that surged through her abused limbs, Juhani hurled herself forward, meeting them head on.

She knocked the nearest one down, and then flipped over the back of the next as it charged at her, a Force enhanced kick taking a third in the side of its bald skull and knocking it flying. A fourth slammed into her – a missile of claws and teeth and stinking, dirty grey flesh.

She rolled backwards with it, using its own momentum to flip it away from her. As she came up to her feet again, her body screamed in protest. More Rakghouls closed inexorably in.

"Juhani!" Zaalbar's roar was barely coherent. "Catch."

She held out a hand and the Force guided her lightsaber smoothly into her grasp. It ignited with a _snap-hiss_, the blue light from it startlingly bright in contrast to the previous darkness. She whirled, blade spinning, severing one Rakghoul's head before piercing another straight through the chest.

The remaining few fell quickly under their combined onslaught.

As the edge of adrenaline rush faded Juhani staggered, falling against a plastocrete wall that ran with poisonous snowmelt. The ground was looping and swaying beneath her feet and her breath came in fast, ragged gasps. After a moment, she dropped down onto her haunches, tremors passing though her legs and back.

Zaalbar loomed over her massively. She could sense his concern without him having to say anything.

"Mission?" she asked him quietly when her head had stopped spinning quite so badly. "The others?"

He made a mournful barking sound that didn't translate directly.

"We lost then," she said quietly, for the first time seeing him properly – the blaster burns and the dried blood and assorted filth matting the rest of his fur. He wasn't part of a victorious search party looking for survivors. He'd been wounded and knocked down into the blighted depths of the under city, just like her. The sense of despair, rising like a black tide inside her, was near overwhelming.

"They hit us too hard and fast" She could feel his frustration and barely contained, frantic anger. "What happened, Juhani? You didn't get any warning of them? I've never seen you fight so . . ."

"Ineptly," she finished for him when she could speak.

_Yes, inept is the word you're looking for_. Beneath her fur, she could feel herself flushing with shame and embarrassment, remembering the fear and near panic that had consumed her when she realised she couldn't find the Force. With an indrawn breath, she forced herself to be calm – self-rapprochement was not useful in the current circumstances. "Something stopped me from . . . being able to reach the Force."

Zaalbar growled. "They had a Jedi with them? A Sith?"

Juhani frowned. What she had felt . . . she had never even heard of a Jedi being capable of doing such a thing. "Perhaps." There was doubt in her voice, but she couldn't think of an alternative explanation. The way her head was pounding it was difficult to think at all.

A whining note vibrated from deep inside Zaalbar's chest.

"I'm sure Mission is okay," she said firmly, recognising its source. "I saw her using her stealth field. She is tough and smart. More so than any of us, perhaps. If anyone could have escaped from that ambush, then it is her."

"If they have harmed her. If they have so much as touched one of her lekku . . ." Zaalbar threw back his head and let loose a thunderous roar. It echoed wildly off the surrounding walls and made Juhani's head feel as if it was going to split open.

Then, abruptly, he was calm again.

No, not calm, Juhani realised. Resolved.

As must she be.

"You are injured" he said, peering down at her in concern. "Badly injured. You can't heal yourself . . .?"

"I . . . I don't have the same skills in that direction that Jolee, Tamar and Bastila possess," she admitted. She had always concentrated more fully on the warrior skills. "I can put us both into healing trances, but only when we get somewhere safe where we can rest." Pushing the pain and weakness away into the background, she stood up. She could still feel her leg muscles twitching and spasming, and the throbbing in her head persisted over everything.

From a belt pouch, she took a kolto pack, splitting it in two and tossing half to Zaalbar. Forcing her hands steady, she injected her half into her thigh muscle, just above the raw, seeping blaster wound she had there. The burn of it was like cold fire in her veins, pain and relief together. She heard herself gasp involuntarily.

Going back over the fight with the Rakghouls, she tried to remember if she had taken any wounds. She couldn't feel any trace of infection or disease within her, but the effects of her other injuries might be masking it. Even a missed scratch could be deadly. _Better safe than sorry_, she acknowledged silently, taking out an ampoule of serum and injecting that into herself too. "You have any of these?" She asked Zaalbar, holding the empty ampoule up. "You need to take one."

For a moment, she thought he was going to protest, but he just nodded. As the kolto gradually started to clear her head, she started looking around them, trying to locate some hint of a way up, back to the surface.

But there was nothing she could see in the immediate vicinity. "Come on, let's get moving," she indicated the direction that felt most right.

It was going to be a long trek back.

-s-s-

The gates slammed closed, mere feet in front of Celyanda.

Tamar held them with the Force while Yuthura drove her lightsaber through a control panel, sealing them shut in a shower of blue-white sparks as the control mechanism shorted out. From immediately behind them came a harsh sputtering noise, as of lightsabers trying and failing to cut their way through cortosis fibre.

Cortosis fibre was a rare and rather brittle substance with the unique property of being able to refract – and therefore withstand – the focused beam-blade of a lightsaber. There was a small amount of it alloyed into Tamar's Baragwin assault blade, allowing the weapon to stand up to a saber duel. It was prohibitively expensive to use on any kind of larger scale – such as in armour or structures – however.

In this instance at least, Darth Auza's paranoia seemed to be working for them rather than against. As one, they turned and sprinted hard.

"We need to split up," Tamar stated between panting breaths as they paused briefly to seal a second set of gates. From some way behind came a loud crash accompanied by the squeal of rending metal. Celyanda had obviously given up on the lightsabers.

"We do?" Yuthura's response was so bland that it made him glance at her sidelong as they started running again.

She was giving nothing away.

"I need you to get back to the skyrunner. Get it airborne," he told her. Through the Force, he was aware that Celyanda had reached the second set of gates, and glanced back over his shoulder involuntarily. These ones weren't reinforced with cortosis fibre, so didn't prove much of an obstacle.

They emerged into the bright sunlight of one of the palace's many gardens. Several mind-wiped slaves lounged around, watching them in vacant cow-eyed incomprehension as they passed through.

"If your desire is to protect me, it is misplaced," Yuthura noted as they continued to jog. He surmised that what lay underneath her words wasn't quite so neutral, but she was keeping it extremely well masked. "Both of us together barely survived back there."

Celyanda was gaining on them. "We need a way out." His tone was grim as they quickened their pace, footfalls pounding on the marble floor. "If they cut us off from the skyrunner . . ." He made a gesture. "We're womp rats in a barrel-shoot."

They rounded another corner into a long glass-floored corridor, serene white cloud tops below their feet. As an automated door closed behind them, Yuthura paused to seal it shut with a deftly placed bit of sabre welding. If they were lucky, it would hold just slightly longer than it took to seal. "And meanwhile you'll be doing what?"

"What we came here for – which wasn't a nice, friendly chat with a Sith Lord." Given the circumstances, the calm and casual tone of their conversation struck him as being wildly absurd. "I'm going to try and grab this place's computer core. Download the comm. logs if I can."

He heard Yuthura let out a breath as they resumed running, and felt a brief hint of exasperation surface in her. "Not to cast doubt on you're abilities or anything, but if they catch up to you . . ." A brief, negatory flick of a head tail.

"Maybe I can talk to them," he ventured. "They're not dark in a true sense."

"I didn't get the impression they were much for conversation." A flash of deep frustration. "If you're alone when they . . ."

"But I won't be alone." He smiled. "You're going to be giving me air support."

They reached the point where their paths had to diverge, pausing briefly.

"This would work much better if we reversed roles," she pointed out matter-of-factly, looking behind them to where they could still sense Celyanda's remorseless approach. "You're the more experienced pilot, and I know my way around here better than you do."

Tamar could tell that a big part of her wanted to shout at him: to grab him and try to shake some sense into him. The surface was still as calmly controlled as ever, though, constrained by iron bands of discipline.

"You're missing one vital factor," he told her simply. "I have something you don't."

"And what's that?" The brief look she directed his way showed both irritation at his flippant tone, and fear . . . for him he realised after a moment.

He reached over his shoulder, patting the module built into the back of his armour. "A rocket pack."

-s-s-

"I trust you have good reason for contacting me like this, Jedi Bastila?" The Jedi Master, Mida Tapawan, peered at her owlishly. Hunch shouldered and seemingly swamped by her Jedi robes, she looked like someone's frail and querulous old grandmother.

Bastila was shocked. It had been only been a year – albeit an eternally long year that seemed to have encompassed several entire lifetimes and taken her to a completely different universe from the one she had once inhabited – since she'd last seen Master Mida in the Dantooine Enclave. To look at her now twenty years could have passed.

The bluish light from the holographic image of the Jedi Master was the main source of illumination in Captain Organa's ready room. The captain, Canderous and Zikl stood alongside her, Bastila herself occupying the central position being beamed back.

She inclined her head respectfully, trying to hide her feelings. "I am in urgent need of guidance and information, Master."

The old woman's lips twisted sourly. There was an air of weary bitterness and strain about her that was palpable. Bastila found herself wondering if the suspicion and distaste she thought she saw in the woman's eyes was really there, or was merely a product of her own self-doubt. "You picked a very bad time." It was almost a snap. "You are aware of the situation the Order faces on Coruscant?"

"I heard . . . about the council, yes."

"Damn Revan," she heard Master Mida mutter beneath her breath. "I cautioned against . . ." She stopped abruptly, her gaze refocusing on Bastila in front of her. "But too late for that now."

Bastila felt herself stiffen defensively. She realised then that Master Mida's suspicion had nothing to do with her fall, or indeed any other aspect of the woman's personal opinion of her. It was down entirely to the link she shared to Tamar – with Revan. Her mouth tightened. "You don't truly believe he is guilty, do you Master?"

There was a long, echoing pause.

"What I believe, young Jedi Knight, is scarcely relevant. The republic at large believes that Revan has gone dark again, to a degree that even finding evidence that completely exonerates him will be unlikely to sway that belief." Her eyes hardened, glassy beads. "He has escaped from Republic custody, running from the legitimate force of law. In the eyes of the galaxy he has damned himself."

Bastila's mouth set stubbornly. "But surely if it is proved he played no part in the Council's murder . . ."

"It will not matter, Jedi Bastila. Truth and justice are nice concepts, but most people – even, alas, the Republic Senate – only want to entertain them as long as they do not prove inconvenient, or conflict with their prejudices and beliefs. People have been looking for reason to hang him from the moment we announced his return and redemption. We were foolish . . . complacent and naïve." A sigh of bone deep weariness, where she seemed to shrink in on herself even more. "Now they have their reason, and I fear that whoever tries to stand alongside him will simply share his fate."

Bastila was dumbfounded, not quite able to take in what she was hearing. "The Jedi Order would never allow that to happen, surely? We have always policed our own . . .."

"The Jedi Order is in no position to do anything about it!" Master Mida's voice, brittle and sharp, was a whip-crack. A significant pause followed before she finally spoke again. "Even if he _is_ completely innocent." She gave a shake of her head. "But this is not what you called me to discuss, is it Jedi Bastila? Out with it, then. I don't have time to waste."

Bastila was so flustered that it took her several seconds to compose herself. As calmly and emotionlessly as she could, she went through their encounter with the Sith at M4107: the fight with the mind-burned pirates, and the recovered salvage from the _Flying Kuat_. She went on to explain about the destruction of the Manarb V way station and the Force disturbance they had encountered – and her belief that the two events were connected.

"Explain what you mean by disturbance in the Force. It is a vague term. Be precise," Master Mida interrupted her.

Bastila hesitated. The disturbance was still there for her to feel – a slick of venom – but it was difficult to actually put it into words. "It was as if whatever process had been used to destroy the pirates' minds had spilled over to taint the Force. An incoherent roaring, like hundreds of maddened voices trying to talk at once, though not in any language I could understand. Jedi Zikl and I felt something similar here at Manarb, but on a vastly larger scale. It is . . . horrible, like a sickness in the Force itself."

Master Mida merely grunted. It was difficult to tell from her expression, but Bastila got the definite sense she was not particularly impressed – or interested – by what she had heard.

She pressed on regardless, finally finishing. ". . . So you see the significance of this. It is my fear that the Sith intend to use whatever they have recovered from the _Flying Kuat_ to help launch a major offensive here on the outer rim."

"And that is it?"

Bastila blinked. She barely managed to keep herself from gaping. _What more do you want?_ "I thought at the least it was my duty to inform those with more wisdom than I of the situation, and seek advice on how to proceed. If there is any information available on what the _Flying Kuat_ was carrying . . ."

Master Mida's lips compressed so much they almost vanished. "Correct me if I am mistaken, Jedi Bastila, but am I right in thinking that both yourself and Jedi Zikl are Jedi Knights, hmm? Not freshly minted Padawans?"

Bastila felt colour start to rise in her cheeks, and fought hard to prevent it worsening. "That is correct," she stated stiffly. Despite her own inner doubts on the matter of her status, something about Master Mida's tone made her bridle.

"Then perhaps its time you started acting like it. A Jedi Knight is supposed to be capable of acting responsibly and maturely; of carrying out the will of the Force, and the Jedi Order with skill and wisdom under their _own_ initiative; of responding to and dealing with crises as they arise without the need of constant supervision."

Bastila swallowed and bit back on a snapped response that was likely to simply inflame matters. She inclined her head. "As you say, Master."

On Dantooine Master Mida had always been known as someone who was friendly and approachable, happy to give her time and share her wisdom with any Padawan who asked – albeit with the attendant risk of having your ear talked off. Now though . . . It wasn't just her appearance that had changed. Her entire personality seemed to have altered with it, twisted and transformed by the strain of recent events. Bastila supposed that anyone who had known her a year ago would be equally as shocked by the changes they saw.

"However, if the Sith are intent on . . ."

"Quite frankly, Jedi Bastila, whatever the Sith are intent on at the moment is unlikely to match any of the iniquities the Republic is in the process of inflicting on itself. I take it the latest news hasn't reached you?"

"News?" Suddenly it was like an icy cold finger scraping down her spine. "What news?"

Across the hololink, Master Mida looked grim. "Last night a bill passed before the Senate. It set forth a change to the Republic's relationship to the Jedi Order, suspending all of our advisory, legislative and judicial privileges pending a full and detailed review of our activities and role within the Republic."

The ominous feeling inside Bastila intensified. "There have been such attempts before in our history. Always the Republic has seen the wisdom . . ."

Master Mida cut Bastila off. "This wasn't simply a bill tabled by a fringe group with a history of distrust for us. It was tabled by Senator Oris Gallavon of Telos. You recognise the name, hmm? A man noted and respected by all for his moderating influence and calm, considered authority. He is no isolated extremist. Indeed, there are whispers that he is one of names on the shortlist from which the next Chancellor is likely to be drawn. In the past we have always been able to count on him to support our position."

She paused, fixing Bastila with a long steady look. "The single bright spot is that the bill didn't receive the seventy percent of the Senate vote needed for it to pass directly into law on first reading. It received 54. With only 28 of the vote dissenting, and the remainder abstaining. You understand senate procedure? Having received a simple majority of the vote, the bill now passes into an amendment phase, before being resubmitted for the Senate's attention. Soundings suggest an amended bill is likely to become law in less than two weeks. There is no Council to fight our corner, or dissuade the Senate from this parlous course. In two weeks the Jedi Order, in its present form is going to cease to exist."

"I'm sure . . ."

"You're sure of what, Jedi? That it will all sort itself out?" she snapped. In that instant, Bastila suddenly understood that the old woman was, beneath it all, absolutely terrified. "It pains me to say it, but the Council made many grave mistakes over the past months. They severely underestimated the strength of galactic feeling against them on the Revan issue. Now, short of us finding and delivering Revan for visible and exemplary justice in the meantime, we are going to be made to pay a price in his stead. The effects on long term Republic stability are likely to be devastating."

She shook her head emphatically. "I'm sorry, Bastila, but all our resources are, of necessity, directed elsewhere right now. You and Jedi Zikl are going to have to deal with this Sith incursion on your own, with very little back-up." A sad sigh, her tone moderating slightly. "I will see what we can find in the archives concerning the _Flying Kuat_. For now do whatever you deem necessary to resolve with the situation." A slight hesitation. "I have every faith in your abilities."

Bastila had just opening her mouth to respond when Canderous barged into her side, levering her off the main comm. position. Since he was in the region of two-hundred and fifty pounds of permacrete-hard muscle, she was forced to yield ground or end up sprawled inelegantly on her backside.

Master Mida's lips twitched in apparent distaste as she looked him up and down. "You are General Canderous Ordo, yes? I have heard of your many . . . deeds. You wish to say something to me?"

"Don't worry yourself. I'll be brief. Am I to understand, Jedi Master, that you are giving Bastila here full authority and command over this mission?"

Master Mida looked startled for a moment, before eventually nodding. "Why yes, General Ordo, I believe I am. Do you object to that?"

"No, not at all. I just wanted everyone to be quite clear, so there can be no misunderstanding." Smiling tightly, the Mandalorian reached across and switched the channel off. The image of Master Mida flickered once before vanishing.

For a brief moment, there was silence. A very brief moment.

"Just what, in the name of the Force, do you think you're doing?" Bastila demanded.

He just smirked at her. "Hey, Princess, you should be thanking me. You've just been promoted. I guess that makes you what, Queen now?"

Before she could issue any kind of retort, the comm. link warbled. "Captain, you're needed urgently on the bridge."

-s-s-

Tamar cursed beneath his breath at the inordinate amount of time it was taking to transfer the comm. logs onto his datapad. It had already taken him what seemed an entire age to hack his way into the system using the computer spikes that T3 had made for him.

Computers were definitely not his forte.

He could feel Celyanda drawing closer by the moment, drawn to him by the none-too-subtle call he was putting out across the Force in an effort to make them fix on him rather than Yuthura. His gut clenched tight, churning.

Over the Force, he couldn't see their two bodies. He simply felt a single looming presence, like a vast and bad tempered giant stomping its way remorselessly towards him. In its face he felt tiny and weak – a bug ripe for squashing.

Finally. The datapad popped free from the output slot and he snatched it up. Navigating as swiftly as he could through the computer terminal's menus, he pulled up a schematic of the palace. It was an incredibly complex array of overlapping networks and lines, almost impossible to take in quickly. As he stared at it he strove for a calm, clinical meditative state, but it was difficult to achieve amidst the other pressing distractions.

From the corridor directly outside came a dull _crump_.

Tamar sensed a brief flaring of pain and outrage as one of Celyanda's bodies was caught by the exploding frag mine, picked up like a rag doll and slammed back violently into a wall.

A normal person would be unconscious, dying or perhaps killed outright. The damage that he sensed told him that much. After a scarcely more than a second though, he sensed Celyanda rise to their feet again, wounds closing over as the Force flowed, seemingly spontaneously, to repair them.

He finally found what he was looking for on the schematic. Switching the terminal off, he turned and ran for it. This was very definitely not the ground on which to try to stand and fight.

Behind him, the door opened. Another mine went off.

This time Celyanda was ready for it, able to shield themselves from the worst of the explosion's effects. _So much for that_.

He ascended two flights of steps, legs pumping, not looking back. A left turn. A rapid, Force-enhanced sprint along a corridor. The schematics remained fixed in his minds eye, superimposed over reality. A right. Collared slaves regarded him with blank indifference as he passed them by.

The main computer room was locked. Rather than waste time with security spikes he was none too adept at using, he used his Baragwin assault blade as a key. It proved effective enough, and in the circumstances, the alarms that it set off scarcely seemed relevant.

Inside everything was neat and sterile. The central computer core was impossible to miss – a good thing, because otherwise he was sure he would have contrived a way to do so. Dropping to his haunches in front of it he wrenched open an access panel, reaching into the inner workings and unceremoniously yanking the data core out of its setting. More alarms went off, slightly different in tone and frequency to the first lot, providing a discordant counterpoint to the general cacophony.

He stashed the data core in a storage compartment built into the thigh plate of his armour.

Celyanda stood in the broken doorway behind him, cutting off his retreat. He knew this without having to look round. Taking a deep breath, he rose to his feet.

_Calm_.

And strangely, he was.

He turned and looked from one to the other. Their lightsabers bathed the room in harsh white glare and their eyes reflected, bright and impassive – mirrors.

"Why, exactly, are we fighting?" The sound of the alarms all but drowned out the words.

No response was forthcoming.

"I'm not your enemy. I don't want to hurt you," he tried again.

Again, nothing. Not even a flicker.

"I don't want you to hurt me." Which was probably a more realistic assessment of likely events.

Celyanda started to advance on him. Tamar got the distinct impression that nothing he was saying was registering in the slightest; that he would have more chance of getting a useful response from one of the mind-wiped slaves.

_Stop!_ He formed the word through the Force, trying to place it directly into their combined mind.

For a wonder they did. They seemed more perplexed than anything. _Do not be afraid. You will be freed from the confines of your flesh and made one with the Force._

Their voice, mind to mind, felt rather like something trying to scour the insides of his skull out. He winced involuntarily as it sent pain spiking through his temples. _Um, thanks? But really, there's no need_.

_Let go of your fear. It is but a transformation. You will become so much more than you are now_.

More pain spiked in his skull. He didn't think they meant for it to hurt him. They were just talking very slowly and loudly, like a tourist trying to make themselves understood to a local who didn't speak the same language. He switched back to verbal, hoping that they'd follow. "There is no death, there is the Force. Yes, I'm conversant with that philosophy. But I was kind of hoping for about . . . say, fifty more years before I got chance to put it into practice at first hand."

_It will free you from your loneliness and isolation._ There was no sense of malevolence or anger, or indeed any other darkside emotion from Celyanda – just something rather vague and alien that was almost, but not quite, compassion.

Tamar winced. Each sentence was punctuated by what felt like a hard punch to the side of his head. "Do you think you could _speak_ a little more quietly, perhaps? Or use your mouths. I know you can manage that."

_Ultimate unity shall be yours_.

This time the pain in his head was somewhat lessened – a dull throb. "What if I was to say I didn't want ultimate bloody unity? That I am quite happy in my 'loneliness and isolation', however pitiful you might find it?"

_You are blind._ Celyanda seemed sad, but unsurprised._ You do not understand._

"How about if I release you from your loneliness and isolation instead of you releasing me?" he asked reasonably. "I am surely less deserving of such a profound boon than you are."

_No! _Tamar let loose a strangled cry, the pain in his skull so intense that it made his vision wash out in a sea of red and black. _I have already achieved unity! You will not sunder me._

Gasping as his vision slowly returned, Tamar decided against pursing that line of questioning any further for the moment. It was likely to end up with an aneurysm on his part. "You know that you are serving someone who claims the title of Dark Lord of the Sith? That you are serving the darkside of the Force?"

_There is no darkside._

It wasn't quite the answer that he'd been hoping for. "Auza is using you as enforcer and assassin. He doesn't remotely care about you."

_There is no lightside_, Celyanda continued as if he hadn't spoken. _The Force is all things. It does not care about meaningless impositions of morality_. _Morality is a thing of singulars, but singulars are blind to the true nature of the Force. Sith. Jedi. Both are equal in their ignorance, seeing only what they want to see._

"But at least the Jedi try not to harm others."

Big mistake, Tamar realised even as he said it. He felt the abrupt end of the conversation, as if Celyanda had flicked a switch. They resumed their advance – cold and remorseless.

The Force flowing through him, enhancing the power of his legs muscles, he sprang directly upwards, grabbing hold of a light fitting and using it to swing himself straight over their heads. White lightsaber blades cleft the air, missing him by millimetres.

As he landed, Celyanda was already facing him again.

He parried a lightsaber slash whilst simultaneously drawing his legs up to hurdle a sweeping blow that would have cut him off at the ankles. Then he gave ground steadily, retreating towards the door as he made parry after parry.

Twisting away from one attack, he ducked fractionally beneath the follow-up, narrowly deflecting another blow so that it skewered the wall beside him rather than his chest. That bought him a fraction of a second's leeway. Reaching out with his mind, he grabbed hold off every loose object in the room – mainly boxes of parts and peripherals stored on shelves against the walls – and yanked them indiscriminately towards him.

Celyanda caught them all, easily. They stopped, hanging serenely in the air.

Using the brief respite to break off from the fight, Tamar ran for it. He needed to be somewhere in open air, where Yuthura could reach him. Celyanda started hurling the boxes after him, but little flickers of warning carried on the Force enabled him to evade them. He sprinted hard, hoping to open out a lead.

Celyanda kept pace easily, unhampered by the encumbrance of armour. One half hurled a lightsaber at his back, which he didn't sense until the last possible second. It clipped a shoulder plate as he veered round a corner in an effort to evade it. Burning pain stabbed through him, but he managed to stretch his lead slightly as they broke stride to pull the lightsaber back to their grasp.

Bursting through a pair of doors, he emerged into the startling brightness of another garden. He slowed slightly. Force lightning filled the air around him.

He staggered, muscles locking tight as electricity grounded itself through his body. His jaw clamped down hard and he bit his tongue hard enough that he could taste blood, hot and metallic in his mouth. Despite the searing agony coursing through him, he was unable to cry out.

When the lightning faded to no more than static hanging on the air, he realised that he had fallen to his knees. It felt like his insides had been burnt to ash and he gasped raggedly, muscles twitching and shuddering. He could feel Celyanda's monstrously looming presence closing in fast. _Thud. Thud. Thud_.

Groaning, he rolled, springing back to his feet and trying to parry the lightsaber blade flashing down at him. The Baragwin assault blade went flying from his unsteady grasp. A dull roaring noise filled his ears and he stumbled back from Celyanda, trying to the last to evade, or at least delay the killing strike . . .

But Celyanda was no longer even looking at him.

Instead, they were looking behind him, at the spot where the _Ajunta's Blade_ had just risen into view – hovering above the palace rooftops, its sleek shark-like nose pointed directly at them.

-s-s-

"Just what, in the name of the Force, were you thinking?" Bastila, finally able to get Canderous alone for a moment, let loose the seething anger that had been building inside her. The air around her seemed to crackle.

They were walking back from a hastily assembled briefing. A short while ago seven battle-damaged Republic capital ships had dropped out of hyperspace on the edge of the system. They brought news that a Sith strike force had struck the Republic military base in the nearby Hoth system within the past day, all but annihilating it. These were the survivors. Further details were, for now . . . decidedly garbled. A hasty conference had ended with the rapid determination that they would retreat to Tylace – a minor system adjoining Manarb, and uninhabited aside from a listening post – and regroup there, working under the assumption that the Sith had been able to track their hyperspace vectors when they fled from Hoth.

The Mandalorian just looked at her, eyes flat and impassive. It was like trying to read an expression from a plasteel starship hull. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well yes, you've obviously been kicked in the head a few too many times. I can see why you'd have trouble understanding anything!" She swallowed, struggling to control her temper. The Force, normally a calming influence, in its present state of tainted turmoil seemed simply to be feeding the discord inside her, winding it tighter and tighter.

Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides, her breathing coming too fast. She could see herself inside her head, grasping the big Mandalorian's throat and Force choking him until his face turned purple, eyes bulging as he dropped to his knees before her, mouth moving feebly as he struggled vainly to draw breath. It was a strangely seductive image, and almost without realising it, she was tapping the Force, reaching out and letting it flood into her . . . _So very easy_.

_No._ A small, shocked note emerged from her throat. _No._

This . . . this wasn't her. Not any more. She whirled away from the Mandalorian so that he didn't see her flushing crimson. "I . . . I'm sorry." _Calm. Calm._ But the Force was a madly whispering cacophony of insanity.

He fell into step with her, matching her rapid pace without having to extend his stride. If he saw any indication of the turmoil within her, he didn't let on. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly quiet, as near to tentative as it got. "Look, you handled yourself well on the asteroid. For the first time in a long time you were . . ." A vague gesture as he struggled for to find the correct word to express what he wanted. ". . . _alive_."

"_Alive?_ As opposed to what? Dead?" She laughed harshly, feeling the anger rising spontaneously again, struggling to hold it back. "You've been watching Tamar too much, haven't you? You're trying to do what he does. Aww, it's kind of sweet. A fifty-year old bone-headed Mandalorian merc reduced to a kinrath pup trying to emulate its master. Pathetic, but sweet."

Canderous simply laughed right back at her – surf crashing onto rocks. She concentrated hard on looking directly ahead of her as she walked; keeping her mind focused and shutting out the whispers.

"You're a warrior, Bastila. A fighter." he continued, his laughter subsiding abruptly. "I've fought alongside you. I know you, at least in that. On the asteroid, the warrior came back. And you know what? It was good to see. It's back now too. If you grasp it."

She suppressed a shudder. What was back was a near lapse to the darkside – a repetition of past failings. It was a danger that was going to be ever present in her now. "So, you want me to lead this Force forsaken expedition. Why?"

Canderous grunted. "Organa is competent enough, I'll grant, in a _textbook_ kind of way." There was a certain sneer in the way he pronounced _textbook_ that made his true feelings on the matter clear. "But Zikl's as green as his skin. And no one was going to give _me_ the job. That leaves you."

"I'm not fit for this." Her voice was little more than a whisper.

"You know your problem, princess?"

"I thought you said I was a queen now?" she replied tartly.

She didn't have to look round to see the smirk. "Same problem as all the Jedi I've met. You think too much."

"I suppose to a Mandalorian thinking _would_ be considered a flaw."

He snorted, but didn't rise to the provocation. "Sometimes you need to act. Sometimes thinking too much is the very worst thing you can do."

Bastila got the sense then that he wasn't really talking about her anymore at all. She shot a sideways glance his way, but his eyes were fixed firmly ahead and he was as grimly impassive looking as always. And right now, she couldn't trust anything she felt over the Force. "Why do you care all of a sudden? Not so long ago you wouldn't have deigned to spit on me."

She saw his grimace. "Because of some damned ronto-loving bastard of a . . ." He shook his head as he trailed off. "We're talking about you here, princess. Not me."

"So what? This is your idea of therapy for a fallen Jedi?"

He shrugged. "If that's how you want to look at it. As an alternative, I can try repeatedly knocking your head against the hull plates to see if I can get some sense in there. Your choice."

-s-s-

_That worthless . . ._

Yuthura could sense Tamar's presence through the Force as she sat back in the pilot's seat. She could scarcely avoid doing so, the way he glowed like a homing beacon – drawing Celyanda to him, away from her.

Forgoing the usual start-up sequence, she felt the angry vibration as the engines fired up – a low frequency thrumming that passed through the skyrunner's hull and up into her body.

She could still feel the brief moment of contact between their fingertips from when they'd parted. A burn. An itch. It was maddening. _Comforting_. She couldn't decide which. Somehow, he'd opened gates in her that she'd thought rusted shut a long time ago. Some of what lay behind those gates scared her a great deal.

Anger flashed again. At him and herself both.

Once she would have used that anger, focusing on it and forging it into a fiercely burning blade of Force within her – hot and pitiless to smite those who stood in her way and thwarted her will.

She still could. It was so easy. All she had to do was reach out, and the power would be there – to be shaped by her will, servant to her needs and desires. The temptation, despite everything – because of everything – was strong. It would always be strong: a drug whispering to an old addict. Except now, she could see that she was the one who would be the servant if she gave in to it.

Sometimes, though, that didn't seem like such a bad thing.

She let go – a simple exhalation of breath – and sought the Force through calm and peace instead. Anger, desire, and turmoil melted away. S_erenity now. Flay later_.

Grasping the controls, she tried to let go of her body, becoming one with the craft to the point where she wasn't piloting the skyrunner – she was part of it. Together they lifted off the landing pad, and she was able to imagine she could feel the flow of air around her, over her skin.

Tamar was no longer broadcasting his position, but it was clearly enough. Eddies and currents and flows swirled around him and Celyanda, mirroring the storm swirling around the Eye of Simus.

As she guided the skyrunner towards it, automated defence turrets built into the palace's spires swivelled towards her. She sensed just before they started to spit blaster fire, rolling the skyrunner out of its path pre-emptively, then countering with return fire of her own, lancing them with surgical precision.

She felt a near miss as heat on her face, destroying a second automated gun-turret, then a third with effortless precision. The storm of Force centred on Celyanda and Tamar grew even more intense, and she homed in on it, blasting the air brakes so that she didn't overshoot, switching off the main thrusters so that she hovered on repulsors.

Below her was one of the gardens, replete with topiary and an ornate marble fountain.

Tamar was on his knees, fading traceries of Force lightning flickering around him. As she watched, he rolled and made a last ditch parry. His sword was knocked from his unset grasp, leaving him defenceless.

_Up here!_ Her silent cry, directed at Celyanda in an effort to draw their attention, was pure desperation.

Celyanda's finishing stroke was stayed as they looked up and saw her. She felt their eyes meet and lock over the distance. Willing Tamar to stay down and out of her line of sight, she opened fire.

Somehow, one of Celyanda's bodies managed to yank the other out of the path of her lasers and she ended up doing nothing more than stitching a neat line of miniature craters in the dirt. She tried to bring her guns back to bear, but they split up, running for cover in opposite directions.

Tamar, who had thrown himself flat to the ground, now scrambled to his feet, snatching up his fallen blade and moving to intercept Celyanda's male half.

_No, no, no, no._ She cursed him beneath her breath. _Let him go._

He didn't. Gritting her teeth, Yuthura brought the skyrunner's nose about towards the female half, who was darting for a pair of gates leading back inside the palace. She opened fire again, but the Force was guiding Celyanda's movements away from where she was firing, and she missed. A geyser of boiling water erupted from the fountain where a laser blast hit it. Celyanda made it inside.

Yuthura could see Tamar and Celyanda's male half duelling in the centre of the garden, blades locked together. As she watched Tamar head-butted his opponent viciously through their crossed blades, sending him reeling, blood poring from his face.

Her attention was yanked away as she felt a powerful surge through the Force.

Something akin to an ion-storm crackled around the skyrunner and the controls went absolutely haywire. The craft lurched violently sideways, out of control, veering towards the rooftops.

She caught it at the last possible second, one of the skyrunner's atmospheric manoeuvring wings scraping across the roof tiles and ripping them loose in a mini-cascade. The repulsors howled from the strain and her lasers refused to fire when she hit them. Gritting her teeth, wrestling with the controls, she switched over to the pair of torpedoes the skyrunner was carrying. Their guidance systems were fried, but she didn't let that worry her, aiming and firing manually through the gates.

There was a low, rumbling _crump_ on impact, a rippling shockwave spreading out through the garden and sending Tamar and Celyanda's male half sprawling.

Yuthura felt a brief, blazing howl of pain and outrage from inside as the air boiled and the ceiling collapsed. When the effects of the explosion subsided though, somehow, pinned beneath tons of fallen rubble, body battered and broken and burnt, Yuthura could feel that she was still alive. A flow of Force from her other half sustained her, steadily regenerating flesh and tying her to life.

Below her, Tamar and the male half of Celyanda were back up and fighting.

Deprived of his twin, Celyanda seemed suddenly to be getting the worst of things, being driven back steadily, bleeding from a wound in his side. Abruptly he broke off from combat, Force jumping up and away, onto the rooftop.

He was directly centred in her line of sight, almost level with her. There was no way he could evade. She didn't hesitate. She pulled the trigger.

Her lasers were still dead from the ion storm. The only thing that happened was a high-pitched beep, a warning light flashing on the control panel in front of her.

Yuthura let out a breath and instead opened the skyrunner's exit hatch. _Get in. Get in. Get in._

Whether Tamar heard her or not was open to question, but he did what she was willing him to do. He fired off a short burst from his rocket pack, propelling himself up the forty or so feet needed to grab onto the skyrunner's boarding ladder.

In front of her Celyanda was forming another of the plasma balls they'd seen earlier. A bright, incandescently glowing point formed in the air between them, expanding rapidly and making the air around it distort wildly with heat haze.

Tamar's shout reached her ears: "I'm clear."

Taking a deep breath, Yuthura yanked back hard on the controls and fired the thrusters. She was slammed back hard into her seat as they soared away into the Dantalus VI sky.

The plasma ball missed their tail end by less than a foot, but they were away.

-s-s-

A piece of wreckage moved in the void. A second or so ago it had just been another piece of floating debris from the unfortunate _Klatooine Junction_. Now, with no one around to observe, its configuration had changed markedly – a spherical black central body, about a metre and a half across, with a number of arms sprouting from it so that it resembled an asymmetric spider.

A Sith spy drone.

It had been sending out brief, encrypted tightbeam bursts for the past few hours since the _Starlight Phoenix_, and the other four ships making up its taskforce, had arrived in the Manarb system. The broadcasts of the _Klatooine Junction's_ life rafts had provided it with the perfect cover for its own stealthy signals.

After a few minutes, a dozen Rakatan Star Cruisers dropped from hyperspace. Their sleek black shapes resembled nothing so much as a school of titanic sharks that had just scented blood in the water. The vessel at their vanguard bore the name _Excelsior_.

At their arrival the spy drone began to transmit the catalogue of readings it had taking from the _Starlight Phoenix_'s hyperspace wake.

-s-s-

"Can we talk for a moment, old man?" There was definite tension – and urgency – in Carth Onasi's voice.

Jolee Bindo looked up from the workbench, where he appeared to be engrossed in some schematics the Rodian, Suvam Tan was showing him. "Old man? I do have a name, you know. Or would you prefer if I started calling you, ooh I don't know, lets say, young pup?"

Carth stifled an impatient sigh. "Okay, fine. Can I talk to you for a moment, Jolee?"

"Sure." He made a waving gesture. "Go right ahead."

"I meant in private." Carth nodded pointedly in Suvam's direction, indicating that he didn't want the Rodian overhearing what he had to say. Suvam was either too engrossed in what he was doing – or too polite – to notice.

"Ooh. Must be something important." Jolee stood up. The look in his eyes didn't match up to his flippant tone. "Shall we go for a walk then?"

As soon as they were out of Suvam's earshot and line of sight Carth proffered the datapad he was holding. "Have you seen this?"

"It's a datapad." Jolee snorted. "Hard as you may find it to believe, we had them back in my day too. I dare say I'm quite familiar with them."

A hiss of exasperation escaped Carth's lips. "It always has to be difficult with you, doesn't it?"

A shrug. "When you get to my age you learn to take your little pleasures where you can find them."

"I meant what's on it."

Jolee glanced down at it briefly, then back up at Carth again. "Since you're obviously so impatient why don't you summarise for me? That way, both of us save time."

They stopped walking at the door to Carth's quarters. Inside everything was so sparse and neat that an intruder would have been hard pressed to tell it was in use at all. Carth gestured for Jolee to sit in a plain, fold-up metal chair while he perched himself stiffly on the edge of his bunk. "There was a raid on Taris," he stated tersely. "One of the forward evac and survey bases was wiped out. Two Republic freighters were destroyed, and another vessel is listed as stolen."

"The _Ebon Hawk_."

"Yeah." He scrolled down the information displayed on the datapad. "There's a list of names. Those confirmed dead in the attack, plus a number who are still listed as missing. Juhani , Zaalbar and Mission's names are all on that latter part."

Jolee sighed, closed his eyes and leant back in his chair. "Let me guess, Carth. You want to go to Taris."

For a long moment, Carth simply looked at him. "Unless you can come up with a better idea."

"Hmm, let me see." Jolee took on a musing look. "Maybe I can at that. How about not going within a dozen light years of Taris?"

"So what? We continue sitting here on our hands, waiting for Tamar to get back, _then_ go to Taris? We have no initiative of our own? We can only do anything when he's around to hold our hands for us? Every hour that passes makes it more likely that Mission and the others will move from the list of the missing to the . . ." He couldn't quite bring himself to say it. "Other list."

Jolee sighed. "Calm down, Carth."

"Calm down? I'm calm, old man. Can't you hear just how bloody calm I am from the grinding of my teeth?"

"Taris is three days away, bare minimum. Juhani, Zaalbar and Mission are all extremely capable individuals. In three days they'll either be fine or . . . there's nothing we can do anyway." Carth opened his mouth, but Jolee spoke over the top of him. "And it is, of course, a trap."

"A trap."

"Think about it. If you're a Sith lord, or the head of Republic Intelligence, and you're trying to urgently track down Revan, what do you do?" Jolee folded his arms and leant forward again. "Do you task all the ships and manpower you possess to search the galaxy on the off chance you find his trail, or do you, say, contrive a threat to his friends, leak the news out, and wait for him to come running? I know which one _I'd_ pick."

"So it might be a trap," Carth conceded after a long pause. "All the more reason we should check it out now, before _he_ gets back and goes running after them himself."

"And of course he'll be much less inclined to do something stupid when he has five of us in need of rescuing instead of three."

"You admit they need rescuing then?"

"Hell's teeth, why is that people below the age of sixty are so damned infuriating?" Jolee let out a calming breath. "As far as we know, the information on that datapad could be completely fake. They could be completely safe, right now."

"Or it could be real."

"Or it could be real. The point is, we simply don't know."

For a long time Carth simply looked at him. He half wondered why he'd felt the need to ask; why he hadn't just fired up _Morgana_ and said they were going. Did he just need to hear someone voicing his own silent doubts? Did he need someone else to take the decision out of his hands, so the guilt of abandoning friends wasn't solely his? Because that smelt dangerously close to cowardice. "Then how about we go and do some investigation. Find out if it's real or not."

"Wow. A sensible suggestion. I'm impressed." Behind the sarcasm there seemed to be sympathy in Jolee's eyes.

Carth looked down at the back of his hands. There was something else on his mind too of course. It had been on his mind for a while now.

"Do you trust her?" he blurted before he'd really decided whether to bring up the subject or not.

"Who the what now? Did I just phase out and miss something there? I hear that can happen when you reach a certain point . . ."

"_Her._ Yuthura."

"Hmm, nice lass. Wonderfully shapely headtails. Has a few issues, but we can hardly hold that against her, can we? Glass houses and rocks, and all that."

"Last time I saw her she was a Sith Master. Now, what? She's supposed to be our best friend? Don't get me wrong. We couldn't have got Tamar out of custody without her, but . . ." Carth grimaced. "I know one thing. People don't change, just like that." He snapped his fingers for emphasis.

"They don't? Well there's me told." Jolee's eyes fixed with his, suddenly stern and piercing. "Maybe you're right. Maybe people don't change, just like that. And maybe she really hasn't changed so much at all. But you don't think that, just perhaps, that points to exactly the opposite conclusion from the one you seem to be reaching?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, me? Just an old man rambling. Just wondering if the Sith could possibly be worthwhile people too. You know, like you and me. And your son."

Carth glared daggers at him, but Jolee gave no sign of noticing. "The point is, Tamar trusts her. More than simply trusts her, I think."

"More than trusts her? What's that supposed to mean?"

Jolee just shrugged. "That they're friends, maybe? Oh, do your own maths. I can't be explaining every damn thing."

Before either of them could say anything else, Suvam's voice came over the Station intercom. The Rodian sounded distinctly agitated. "Umm, we seem to have developed a situation here. Maybe the two of you can find somewhere real good to hide? I can maybe explain the two droids, but you two are a dead giveaway, I'm thinking."

"Slow down, Suvam," Carth said firmly. "What's up?"

"Oh, umm. A Republic Frigate has just hailed us. It's sending a shuttle over to dock. Be here in about five minutes, tops."

Carth tried to will that he'd misheard – or at least misinterpreted. _It never rains but it pours_.

Jolee simply smiled brightly and stood up. "Well then, what are we waiting for? Why don't we go and meet our guests? There's no call to be rude, is there?"

-s-s-

"Look here." Canderous's broad, calloused finger stabbed at the holographic star chart in front of them. "Hoth falls, and that leads to straight to Andat. Then Bespin and Varonat. A row of dominoes stacked up and waiting to be toppled. After that, the entire Corellian trade spine is opened up for the taking. A lightning thrust along there and one of the Republic main supply lanes is in Sith control, and the Core systems are vulnerable. In a single stroke most of the damage they suffered at the Star Forge is overturned."

"They had at most a dozen ships, Mandalorian." The speaker was a holographic image of a Mon Cal – a Captain Ockona, of the Republic battle cruiser, _Stormtide_. "I hardly think it likely that they would attempt such an audacious move with so small a force."

Canderous fixed the Mon Cal with a hard glare. "A dozen ships that you saw, Captain. And it was enough to take Hoth with ease, wasn't it? The single best defended system in the entire sector and they didn't lose anything larger than a few fighters." He shook his head. "You Republic are obsessed with numbers, but numbers don't matter. It's all about the amount of force you can bring to bear at any one point. What does it matter what you have in reserve if it isn't doing anything useful? Seven years ago you outnumbered us ten to one, yet we would have defeated you utterly if it wasn't for one man – Revan."

"I still think you err in your assessment, General." Ockona sounded slightly huffy.

"Really? From what I hear, half the Republic fleet has been pulled onto the search for Revan. That looking like a setup to any of you . . . gentlemen, or is it just me?" Canderous's lips twisted contemptuously. "A dozen ships – a dozen Rakatan ships, I might add, superior to anything in the Republic arsenal. Now that Hoth has gone, what exactly do you have in the vicinity to counter them? I count eleven capital ships here, one all but crippled and another six damaged to one degree or another. I'd estimate you could maybe scrounge up another eight or ten from the surrounding sector now that both Hoth and Manarb have been taken out. They attacked Hoth for a reason, Captains, and it wasn't down to the invigorating weather they have there."

"I agree with Captain Ockona." There was a long moment when the assembled starship captains were utterly silent, turning to look at Bastila as she spoke up. "Although not, perhaps, for the same reasons he has. They're not striking the trade spine."

Canderous turned slowly and looked at her. A very imaginative person might have detected a hint of a wry smile about his lips. "Care to share your interpretation with us then, Jedi Bastila?"

Bastila moved alongside him, gazing up at the holographic map. "If you were talking about Mandalorians – or even the old Revan – your analysis of the threat would be spot on. But you're not. The Sith don't fight for the greater glory or good. They certainly don't sacrifice themselves for victory – only a victory that you, personally, can live to appreciate and gain from is worth winning for a Sith. The fight for themselves and for the power they gain through it. And they use overwhelming force, whenever they are able to." She didn't need to tell him that her experience of the Sith philosophy was very personal – she wasn't speaking from second hand knowledge here. "Such a raid as you describe is, in essence, a suicide mission, for all that its success would open up the possibility of ultimate victory for the greater Sith cause."

"So why attack Hoth then?" This was Captain Organa; along with Zikl the only other person physically present in the room. From the look on his face, it seemed to pain him slightly to be taking Canderous's side.

Bastila's lips pursed. The focus of her eyes looked to be miles away, somewhere that wasn't altogether pleasant. "A test of whatever artefacts they stole perhaps."

"A test?" Captain Ockona sounded indignant.

"The Force _was_ used against us at Hoth, Captain Ockona. And he a way none of us has experienced before." The new speaker was Captain Ryla Vance, a petite and pretty blonde woman, who looked – from the slightly grainy holographic image – to be no older than her early twenties. In the years before the Mandalorian wars, it would have been unheard of for someone so young to have command of her own starship, especially something as significant as a heavy frigate. Events since that time meant that nowadays competence was the only criteria for command.

"Could you elaborate on that, Captain?" Bastila asked her.

Captain Vance seemed to draw herself up straighter – palpable pride at being addressed in person by perhaps the most famous and celebrated war hero in the Republic. "I had the privilege of fighting at the battle of Drucken Well, Jedi Bastila. I had just been promoted to lieutenant and it was my first, and so far only, experience of fighting under the effects of Battle Meditation. I suppose what we experienced at Hoth is how I imagined it must be to face battle meditation from the other end."

Bastila tried to hide her surprise. Battle Meditation, at least to the degree where it could be used to influence entire star battles consisting of tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of personnel spread across millions of kilometres of space, was an extremely rare trait. Bastila was the first person in almost forty years, since the time of Nomi Sunrider, to be known to possess the ability with any strength – which was what made her so valuable to Republic and Sith alike.

"You are sure of that, Captain Vance?"

She frowned, then coloured slightly, looking almost ashamed. "It was like . . . I don't know, it's difficult to describe. A kind of collective buzzing in our skulls? It became all but impossible to think coherently, and coordination and communication broke down alarmingly. Orders were mislaid or misunderstood, or ignored completely in the heat of panic and paranoia. Tempers frayed and there was a huge incidence of friendly fire incidents. Brave, reliable men and women deserted their posts. It was an utter shambles." She ignored the reproaching look Captain Ockona directed her way. "And this is from experienced individuals, who have been blooded in battle many times before. It was like . . . I don't know; like we were all afflicted by a kind of temporary madness. It may not have been battle meditation. I don't claim to be the expert here, but it was _something_. Something I don't particularly care to face again on those terms."

Bastila struggled with her expression. Ryla Vance's description was far in excess of anything that battle meditation was capable of, at least in her own experience of using it. Sure, it could be used to lower the moral of enemy troops, and decrease their cohesiveness to a degree, sowing confusion and exaggerating fears, but nothing to the degree that was being described. Primarily it was of use in improving the coordination and moral of your own side, increasing the effectiveness of even the best soldiers by as much as three or four times.

The Force disturbances that she'd felt at Manarb and M4107 came back to her; the whispering madness; the mind burnt. At least now, she thought, she had a good idea of the purpose of whatever that had been recovered from the _Flying Kuat_. As much as it made her shudder inwardly. "Thank you, Captain. That's very helpful."

The Captain actually smiled at her. "With you to lead us, Jedi Bastila, I know that the outcome will be very different next time. Just as it was against Revan's forces at Drucken Well."

At those words – the simple faith and unquestioning admiration in them – Bastila found she could scarcely keep on looking at her.

"If not a test, perhaps the Hoth raid was meant as a distraction." Captain Organa spoke up suddenly, moving alongside Canderous. "Something that they know will draw us into a response, forcing us to call on ships from surrounding sectors." He indicated three more major Republic military bases in the vicinity. "That way, with all our non-critical ships already recalled to search for Revan, they open up all these systems, here, here and here, for the taking."

Before he could expand on his point one of the gathered holographic Captains abruptly flickered and then vanished.

The red alert alarms went off.

-s-s-

The stars turned to bright lines again as the made it to hyperspace. Finally, Tamar allowed himself to relax slightly. Slumping back in the co-pilot's seat and closing his eyes, he let out a long breath. Beneath his scorched and holed armour, his muscles began to shake as the tension eased and the flow of adrenaline that had been keeping him going gradually subsided.

An old style wedge-shaped Sith Dreadnaught had attempted to intercept them as they'd left Dantalus VI's atmosphere and they'd spent many long, fraught minutes evading turbolaser blasts that would have transformed them into floating vapour if they'd hit. If the Dreadnaught had been one of the faster Rakatan designs, or if the Defel brothers hadn't modified the skyrunner for extra speed – perhaps with the express purpose of evading law enforcement – they would definitely not have made it.

A short and risky hyperspace leap had taken them out to the edge of the Dantalus system, beyond the Dreadnaught's immediate reach. Now, a couple more short leaps on, they could feel reasonably safe in assuming they'd evaded interdiction and program in their real destination – a point near Manaan where they could send a signal to Carth, Jolee and the droids to meet up with them.

Next to him, Yuthura kept on staring straight ahead. She hadn't said anything beyond a few clipped orders since he'd they'd escaped Auza's palace. She didn't say anything now.

He became more and more aware of his injuries as the seconds passed. Lightsabers cauterised the wounds they inflicted, so there was no danger of bleeding to death. He had the rather uncomfortable feeling that he'd sustained some quite nasty tissue damage though.

After a few seconds more, he moved to unfasten himself from the harness belting him to his seat, wincing at the discomfort even that much movement caused. He rose stiffly, hobbling into the cramped space behind the seats that acted rather laughably as living space.

"You're angry with me, aren't you?" he said quietly as he began the rather painstaking job of extracting himself from the Mandalorian armour.

She didn't answer right away. His back was turned to her but he could feel her eyes on him. "I . . . I don't know what I am right now." A pause. "There are still a lot of things I'm not very good at."

"There are some things none of us are very good at." A hiss of pain escaped between clenched teeth as he tried to reach over his shoulder to free a clasp. His body told him in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to comply.

A moment or two later Yuthura was standing behind him, fingers deftly unfastening the troublesome clasp.

"Thank you." He managed to get the bulky shoulder plates off over his head with only a slight wince as he unavoidably stretched the injured muscles of his side. "But you are angry with me. I can tell."

"I have no reason to be angry with you," she said blankly. This close, he could smell what he thought was her sweat. It was a little like burnt cinnamon; not at all unpleasant. "Everything went successfully. We accomplished what we set out to, and we are both still alive."

_Everything went successfully providing T3 can extract something worthwhile from either the comm. logs or the data core_, he thought but didn't say.

Silently she helped him with more of the clasps and fastenings of his armour, until he'd managed to get out of the badly scarred and holed breastplate.

"I'm sorry."

She laughed, startled. "You are, aren't you? Even though you have no idea at all what you're apologising for."

"I'm apologising for making you angry." Finally, he was out of the armour entirely, standing there in skin-tight underarmour. It had been burnt through in several places, most notably a huge patch on his left side. The skin underneath showed various degrees of burns.

"Don't." She touched his shoulder; turned him round. "You can't apologise for other peoples' flaws." Her eyes met his. About six inches shorter than he was, at this proximity she had to tilt her head back slightly. The tight confines of the skyrunner meant they were very, very close.

Her fingertips probed gently at his wounded side, their touch feather light. Suddenly she was channelling the Force into the charred muscle tissue. The sensation made him gasp.

"It was the first thing I had my old master teach me when I returned to Dantooine," she told him at his slight look of surprise. "I knew so many ways of causing harm and destruction through the Force . . ." she trailed off, looking down, concentrating on shaping the Force so as to regenerate the tissue and draw away the pain. "I hoped it would help me become . . . something better than what I was."

The shoulder of her jumpsuit was torn, the skin beneath it a raw and angry shade of indigo, seeping clear fluid. It looked horribly painful. As the Force continued to flow from her into him, and he felt his strength gradually returning, he laid a hand over it as lightly as he was able to and started to weave his own threads of healing Force, channelling it into her.

The effect was immediate and . . . startling. Suddenly Force was flowing from one of them to the other and back again, forming a connecting loop between them.

He could feel Yuthura's heartbeat as part of himself, and it seemed to synchronise itself exactly with his own, picking up speed and rhythm; likewise her breathing. Every one of his senses was instantly hypersensitised, and for a very brief moment his awareness of her – scent; texture; even emotion – was almost total. Their minds touched together . . .

And they both flinched back almost simultaneously, the Force ceasing to flow. Too much. Too soon. Too scary. They were both left gasping, stunned by what they had seen.

He blinked stupidly, semi-dazed. His breath came too fast and his heart thudded, thunderous in the close confines.

Her eyes glistened as they looked into his. For a brief moment she looked utterly, utterly startled by what had happened – all the residual cynicism and regret and compounded pain stripped away to leave her looking much younger and softer-edged than she usually was. Her composure reasserted itself quickly, but she didn't turn away from him, as he expected. He didn't turn away either.

Without there being any conscious decision, their faces started to drift closer together.

He stopped, flushing. Their lips were separated by bare millimetres and he could feel the warmth of her breath against his skin. He started to draw back, but her hand went to the back of his neck and caught him, holding him firmly in place. She was very strong.

Though soft, her voice was authoritative. "We are neither of us children anymore, Tamar." Then, more insistently. "Stop. Protecting. Me."

He stopped. Time dilated and thoughts froze. The universe contracted down until it was just them and that cramped, intimate space – nothing else. Then they were in each other's arms, lips coming together in a kiss that was almost ferocious. Her head tails snaked around him, embracing him like an extra set of limbs. Searching fingers found the zip in the back of his underarmour.

Everything was swept away.

-s-s-

A startled gasp escaped from Bastila's lips as the bond flared to life. For one, awful, awful instant she thought that it signalled Tamar's demise – that what she felt was his suddenly becoming one with the Force. But, after a moment longer, she realised that, no, what she had felt had not been death.

Not remotely death.

Then the link died back again briefly before flaring once more, leaving her flushed and trembling, her concentration in tatters, all but thrown out of her battle meditation entirely. Anger, embarrassment and confusion warred, along with other emotions she didn't understand, puncturing any semblance of serenity within her. She clamped the link down hard, forcing it away to the farthest recesses of her mind.

Suddenly she felt the formations of Republic fighters wavering, and her attention snapped back to the here and now. The dark presence she could sense, looming over everything, lashed out at her with renewed vigour as if it sensed her distraction, its anger volcanic at being thwarted for so long.

Brutal, sticky, grasping fingers of Force jabbed at her mind, and this time they penetrated – perforating her defences and violating her being with their taint of utter foulness. Dimly, she felt her physical self screaming in agony, but that seemed entire light years away. She struggled desperately, trying to fight back as her assailant attempted to rip her consciousness from her body and leave her shattered, lost and unravelling, adrift in a sea of madness.

Another scream wracked her, though she was no more aware of it than the first. She fought to embrace the Force, though the effort left her feeling as if she'd been scraped raw. The darkness battered at her, sending her tumbling before it like a leaf blown in the wind, utterly helpless.

Someone caught her.

It was Zikl – a pale, wispy thread of pure silver light – standing beside her. Even viewed purely as a thing of the Force he seemed tentative somehow, but there was also a lining of unwavering strength to him. The Nautolan extended a hand to her. "Take my strength," he said to her, calm despite his obvious fear. She saw his real face, superimposed like a vague ghost over everything. "Use it."

She gaped at him – started to protest – but he just shook his head, braided head tails rippling. Finally, she accepted his grasp, and renewed strength flooded into her.

Then the darkness was lashing out at her again.

It was clumsy, she saw this time: brutish, and uncoordinated, with no subtlety to it whatsoever – a bludgeoning hammer reaching out across the void and smashing all of the minds and consciousnesses that it found in its path. The power of it though, almost rendered that clumsiness irrelevant. It was clumsy like a tornado or a hurricane.

Drawing upon the strength that Zikl offered, she skipped aside from it like quicksilver, darting away from its reaching grasp. She could feel its towering rage. Again and again, she evaded it as it strived to smash her. As long as it kept on concentrating on her, it was not concentrating on the fleet. As long as she could keep ahead of it, there was still hope of victory.

Eventually though, even with Zikl's assistance, weariness set in. She stumbled, and suddenly the darkness loomed over her: a tidal wave about to break and sweep her away.

"Use me." Zikl told her as the darkness rushed towards them. His light was flickering like a wind blown candle; weak and sputtering. "Don't be afraid."

"But I'll . . ."

"Use me!" For the first time that she had known him, there was command in his voice – authority that would not be denied.

Gulping heavily, she did as he told her, draining the last of the Force from him and channelling it through herself, augmenting it with her own strength as a blazing lance of energy.

The light momentarily sliced through the enshrouding darkness as it descended towards her, throwing back the shadows to reveal the assailant that lay behind it – a stooped, hollow thing of shadows and malice, bowed beneath the crushing weight of a huge black crown. Its eyes met with hers, empty of everything – spiritless and bleak.

For a brief moment, she glimpsed exactly where it physically was. Then she thrust the spear of light hard into its face, retreating frantically, searching out her body and consciousness.

"The _Excelsior_! Throw everything you've got at the _Excelsior_." Bastila's eyes snapped open, struggling to focus on her immediate surroundings. Blood was streaming from a ruptured blood vessel in her nose, turning the lower half of her face and the front of her Jedi robes bright red. She swayed, eyes unfocused.

She realised dimly that she was holding Zikl's hand, though the Nautolan lay unmoving on the deck before her. There was only the weakest, most tenuous sense of life from him.

"The _Excelsior_ . . ." This time it was barely more than a whisper.

A moment later, she collapsed, unconscious.

-s-s-

Captain Organa watched helplessly over the viewscreens on the _Starlight Phoenix's_ bridge as another volley of turbolaser blasts pounded into the _Stormtide_.

The battle cruiser's hull was battered and charred, as many as half its decks sliced open to vacuum. Gun nacelles had been obliterated, leaving it all but defenceless, and the fires burning in its main engine had only just been extinguished by the vacuum as they ran out of oxygen to feed on. Sith fighters continued to strafe it, and more turbolaser blasts from a pair of Rakatan vessels bombarded it repeatedly.

They had already lost the _Hoth Aurora, _the _Sullen Moon_, and the _Ventura_. Now Captain Ockona's vessel was equally doomed. Organa's fist clenched at his side, knuckles turning white.

For a short time, it had looked like they might succeed in achieving an improbable victory, even without Bastila's battle meditation to aid them. At least the other looming, debilitating presence was gone too. Ockona and three other ships had managed to break through the Sith lines, zeroing in on the _Excelsior_, and pounding it in a crippling crossfire.

Bastila had been right about the ship being important – half the Sith strike force had immediately broken formation and desperately wheeled about to try to protect their flagship. This had given Organa and Vance the perfect opportunity to launch their own counteroffensive, striking at the turning Sith vessels mercilessly from the rear.

Two of the Sith ships had exploded, their reactors overloaded by the damage they had taken. The _Excelsior_ had looked like it might be the next, fires burning on board and its shields less than tatters. But then the _Hoth Aurora_ had been taken down by sheer fluke, a dying Sith Gun ship penetrating a hole in its shields as it spiralled out of control, smashing into the battle cruiser's command decks.

That had given the _Excelsior_ the moment of respite it had needed. Ockona's offensive thrust had faltered, and the _Excelsior_ managed to break off and make the leap to hyperspace, fire still flickering on several decks.

And with their flagship safe, the rest of the Sith strike force had appeared to regain their heads. Now it was the Republic's ships that were out of position and overstretched, with Ockona himself fatally isolated.

They had actually managed to sell themselves ship for ship – a remarkable achievement considering the superiority of the Rakatan designed vessels, and the fact that more than half their own ships were already badly damaged. But now it was as good as over. Their lines were stretched, every surviving ship bore severe battle scars, and the Sith formations had recovered.

There was no prospect of Bastila regaining consciousness anytime soon. No Battle Meditation to the rescue. In minutes – maybe seconds – it was going to turn into a rout. If they stood and fought, they would be annihilated.

The _Stormtide_ exploded; a brilliant utterly silent flash.

Organa stared at it grimly, the after image of the explosion burnt into his retinas. Then he did the only thing he could. He signalled the retreat.


	5. Mission Critical

**5. Mission Critical**

Captain Vorsk Bortha could taste blood. The whine of the smoke extractor units made his head throb, the air still acrid enough that it caught the back of his throat and made it a struggle not to succumb to violent fits of coughing. He didn't want to cough. Right now, his survival instincts told him that he didn't want to draw attention to himself in any way whatsoever. Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth it came away red. His eyes flicked involuntarily sideways.

Darth Malefic sat in the main command chair at the centre of the _Excelsior's_ bridge, slumped forward, his head resting in his hands. It looked almost as if the weight of the crown he wore had become too great for his neck to bear. The only movement that came from him was the slight shifting of his armoured shoulders as he breathed in an out. He looked as if he might have been injured somehow. Unconscious even.

At that moment, Bortha would have sooner dived naked into a Sarlacc pit than venture close enough to find out.

It seemed that Mek Volloon did not share his reticence.

Volloon was one of the Dark Jedi that had come on board the _Excelsior_ with Malefic. From what Bortha had seen, he was utter slime: an obsequious toady and lickspittle, who would do anything to ingratiate himself with those above him in the food chain, while all the time feeding mercilessly on those below.

"My master, can I be of aid?"

_Get away from him, you idiot_. Bortha's intestines felt as though they were rearranging themselves in interesting and highly complex knots. Even for someone as repulsive as Volloon he did not want to see this happen.

Malefic remained motionless, apparently completely oblivious to his surroundings.

"Master, are you injured?" The wheedling tone of Volloon's voice set Captain Bortha's teeth on edge. Suddenly Volloon was reaching out to touch Darth Malefic's armour plated shoulder. Bortha instinctively flinched away . . .

The instant Volloon's hand made contact with him, Malefic's arm shot out like a piston. His gauntleted hand clamped tight around Volloon's throat, the Dark Jedi's eyes bulging alarmingly – at first in shock, then very quickly, in pain and panic as his windpipe was crushed shut.

Bortha could hear the soft whisper of the servomotors in Malefic's armour, enhancing his strength to truly formidable levels. Although he was slightly less Force-sensitive than the average rock, he could also tell instinctively that the Force was being used somehow.

Volloon's face was purple. Drool spilled from the corner of his mouth, which worked like that of a landed fish, unable to produce sound. His hands clawed ineffectually at Malefic's arm, whilst the Dark Lord's helm swivelled round slowly. The silver light spilling from his visor concealed any hint of an expression, but Bortha's imagination did a very effective job of filling in the detail.

He turned away, feeling sick as he tried vainly to concentrate on the instruments in front of him. He couldn't block out the sounds though.

It seemed to go on for a long time – an impossibly long time. Eventually there was a harsh, splintering crack, Volloon's vertebrae giving way. A moment later came a dull, lifeless thud.

Bortha let out the breath he'd been holding. His heart was thudding percussively, and his face felt slick with sweat: simultaneously hot and freezing cold. Something compelled him to turn his head and look, despite the gibbering protests of his brain.

Malefic's voice rasped, animalistic. "Where. Am. I?"

-s-s-

It brought back memories.

Some of those memories almost made Morrigance Fel envy Revan's total lack.

The patrons of Ronklin's Cantina parted before her, oblivious to both her presence and their own subconscious movements to accommodate it. In five years, the faces had changed, but on some deeper level, they were exactly the same – smugglers; gangsters; bounty hunters; joygirls and hangers on. She suspected that, even if she could have stepped a hundred years either direction in time, she would find exactly the same.

An energy curtain parted to admit her to one of the private backrooms. It was the same backroom as the last time she was here. She hadn't been conscious of that when she'd booked it, and it gave her a moment of pause. If such a detail, small as it was, could slip beneath her notice, it suggested she was not quite as totally in control as she needed to be.

In the end, though, she dismissed the doubt. It was apt enough – even pleasingly symmetrical.

She settled herself smoothly down at one of the tables – the same table, and even the same seat as before. That was natural enough. Five years ago, it had been the best position in the room, and it remained the best position now.

_"Do you mind if I join you?"_

_Morrigance looked up from her seat, not bothering to conceal her annoyance. She nodded at the holdout blaster lying openly on the table in front of her. "I already have all the company I'm interested in."_

_"A BlasTech P102. Interesting. Personally, I'd take a P104B for preference."_

_"The P102 has a firing note several decibels quieter. A small difference, but it takes it below the suppression threshold of a sound-dampening stealth field. You can keep your greater power output and recharge rate." She wasn't sure why she explained rather than simply telling him to get lost._

_He just nodded. "You give these matters serious thought, I see. Perhaps I will . . . re-evaluate my assessment."_

_She looked at him more closely, holding her ire in for the moment. He was a big man; six-three, pushing the two-hundred and fifty pound mark, and from the look of it, that mainly muscle. Dark skin, darker eyes, clean-shaven scalp. Handsome enough if that was your thing, she decided, but not the kind of handsomeness that particularly stood out – physically at least. Beyond the physical, there was something else, though. Morrigance eventually decided it was presence. So much presence that he seemed to . . . glow with it, even when he was trying to hide it, as he appeared to be now._

_His attire spoke volumes too. It was neither expensive gangster trash, nor grungy spaceport slob, displaying what could even be called restrained good taste. All in all, an individual of an ilk not common on Nar Shaddaa. _

_But right now, no matter how impressive he was, he was not welcome._

_"I think," She enunciated calmly and clearly, "That you would prefer the company of one of the joygirls by the bar. I hear that Oonara – the green skinned Twi'lek there – can do the most amazing things with her lekku."_

_He just smiled and eased himself into the seat opposite her. "You mistake me. I do not seek someone to warm my bed."_

_Momentarily, Morrigance was too surprised to speak. Although she'd learned not to use that particular trick against Hutts – most had some kind of inbuilt resistance to it, and got rather bad tempered when you tried it on – she'd generally found it to be very effective against humans._

A Jedi?_ She wondered briefly, disturbed. _

_But no, he did not seem much like any of that crackpot order of fusty, be-robed mystics. Neither did he convey the characteristics– the arrogant self-regard and overweeningly ostentatious demonstrativeness – she had come to associate with the Sith._

_Her eyes hardened. "Let me rephrase. I have arranged to meet somebody. You are now sitting in his chair. If you are still in his chair when he arrives, then the day is likely to take a decidedly unpleasant turn for you."_

_Another smile, totally unruffled. "The person you are meeting with is me."_

_"I think not." She rested her hand on the tabletop, noticeably closer to her blaster._

_"Drevon Rae is dead."_

_It was hard to suppress a jolt. As he spoke, she knew with absolute and irrefutable certainty that he was telling the truth. Inwardly she reeled, struggling with her composure. Outwardly, the only change was that her dark eyes narrowed fractionally. "I find it difficult to believe that such news would reach you ahead of me."_

_"Normally so would __I.__ But in this case, I have an unfair advantage. You see, I killed him."_

_"You killed him," she repeated, a fraction numb. She could have her blaster in hand and shoot him in the face or chest within a fraction of a second. Less than three seconds later, a small army of bodyguards would be around her. Suddenly though, such precautions seemed inadequate._

_"Nothing personal, you understand. But he stole from me." His tone was still conversational, almost offhand. "Regrettably, I find myself in the position where it is impossible for me to let such . . . slights pass unanswered."_

_She picked up the blaster and pointed it at him. He didn't look at all perturbed. In fact, the slant of his mouth suggested he was amused. "Okay, you arrogant son of a Hutt, who the hell are you? And what do you want?"_

_He folded his hands. "I'll take those in reverse order, if I may. I have a business proposition I wish to make to you, Lady Fel. One that I think you might find interesting, should you be willing to hear me out."_

_She snorted and made a show of tightening her finger on the trigger. "And your name? Speak quickly. My trigger finger is prone to involuntary spasms when I'm bored."_

_"My name is Xavious."_

Xavious?_ It was annoyingly familiar, but she couldn't for the life of her place it, even though such details were the currency by which she lived. "How about your full name?"_

_"Xavious Revan."_

_She gritted her teeth. "You know, I do not appreciate being mocked. Right now, especially, I do not appreciate it."_

_Suddenly the easy charm vanished, replaced by something cold and watchful. "You asked for a name. I gave you one. Whether you like it or not doesn't concern me."_

_"What I like should be your single, overwhelming concern right now." She could manage cold too._

_"And what do you like? Your job, working for Drevon Rae and the Exchange? All the fascinating people you come into contact with, running their intelligence gathering operations? The sense that you are truly fulfilling your potential?"_

_She gritted her teeth. "Did anyone ever tell you that it's not smart to antagonise a person holding a gun to your head?"_

_He spread his hands and smiled. It was a disarming smile, and it was surprisingly difficult not to be disarmed – despite her best efforts. "I apologise. I do not wish to antagonise you. Quite the contrary. I wish to offer you a job."_

_"I already have a . . ." she started, and then trailed off._

_"You're thinking that, with Drevon Rae gone; you're the boss now, aren't you? Normally I'd agree. You _are_ by far the most . . . talented person available to fill that position. His natural heir, even. But there's a snag. Hulas and a number of others found out about Drevon several hours ago, and they've moved quickly. They're scared of you, you know? I suppose that's flattering, in its way, but it also means they've already acted to fatally undercut your position before you get chance to respond. There's one very good assassin already waiting for you to leave this cantina. Where there's one there'll soon be a score. Half your network is likely dead by now."_

_She looked at him hard. "You're lying."_

_"Am I? Is that what your . . . special skills tell you?"_

_He wasn't. It was a struggle to keep her face expressionless. "I think, perhaps, I'll take my chances."_

_He just nodded. "Yes, you're far from finished, even now. I might even be tempted to place a small wager on you succeeding. Even so, yours is not a position I envy. Moreover, is it truly something you wish to fight so hard for? There isn't a voice in the back of your mind that's been there for months now, wondering if there isn't something more?"_

_"You don't know me." Her words were clipped and precise. "Don't pretend to know me."_

_Silence. His gaze remained fixed on her face, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he could see straight inside her to the core. That, to the contrary of her words, he knew her very well indeed. Suddenly it wasn't quite so difficult to believe his claims as to who he was. She still held her blaster trained on him, but it had come to seem almost an irrelevance._

_"What is this job you offer?" Even as she spoke, she cursed herself – for so easily succumbing to the bait he trolled with._

_"I want you to do for me exactly what you did for Drevon Rae. Run my intelligence networks. They are truly extensive in a way that even the Exchange cannot match, but right now, lacking in that spark of inspiration you would bring. In return . . . well, there are no real limits. Wealth; power; authority. Whatever, particularly, is your thing. And I will help the potential inside you blossom. You are the most powerful self-taught I have come across, but it is the merest fraction of the true strength you are capable of."_

_Her lips twisted into a sneer. Inside though, a flicker of temptation had taken root. "Is that right? Show me a trick then, fly-boy."_

_He laughed. "I'm not a performing tauntaun."_

_"Really? You look like one."_

_A half smile. "I'm going to reach into my pocket now. Just a warning. I'd prefer not be shot in the head in the meantime."_

_She indicated for him to go ahead, and a moment later, he laid a keycard on the table between them. Bay 4B it said on it._

_"I don't expect an answer straight away, and I don't expect you to believe what I've told you without confirming for yourself. I'll be there for the next 48 hours." He stood up. "If I see you I'll assume you're accepting my offer. If not . . ." He shrugged. "Well, I'll be ever so slightly sad. As a freebie I'll take care of the assassin outside, but I do recommend you watch your step." Turning his back on her, he started to walk away._

_"Who are you, really?"_

_He glanced back, over his shoulder. "Like I said, Xavious Revan."_

Morrigance's black-gloved fingertips traced across the pitted surface of the tabletop. Someone had sliced a row of shallow notches with a vibro-knife. They hadn't been there the last time, she was certain.

Idly she found herself wondering how different things might have turned out if she hadn't gone to Bay 4B. She'd waited until the very last moment of the deadline, but she had gone nonetheless. It had been as a compulsion planted in her thoughts, growing and growing until there had only been one possibly answer to it.

_"You really are Darth Revan." It was a statement rather than a question._

_He looked round at her, his expression slightly strange. Eventually he said: "No. The robes and mask are Darth Revan. He is a convenient shell I sometimes don. I am simply Xavious."_

_Then he smiled slightly. "I am very glad you made it." He swept her a half bow, gesturing expansively. "Come then, Lady Fel. Follow me. We have much to discuss."_

_And she had followed._

"I always did think that the rumours of your demise were greatly exaggerated."

Morrigance lifted her gaze slowly at the familiar voice. She'd sensed his approach of course, even if she hadn't acknowledged it.

He hadn't changed much at all, she noted, aside from a slight update to the fashions he chose to wear. He still looked like he was in completely the wrong profession. "Hello Rath." Her voice was cool and calm, completely lacking in humanity. "Please do take a seat."

Rath Gannaya hesitated. She could sense a disquiet in him that belied the smoothness of his tone. If she could have smiled still, she might have done, though that was long beyond her. As she recollected, Rath was not intimidated by much of anything.

"Why the mask?" he asked quietly, lowering himself with a studied, almost prissy kind of grace into the indicated chair. The sense of his discomfiture didn't fade. In fact, it seemed to grow. "I might have missed you entirely, you know. Even with us going back so far."

"Oh, I have my reasons, Rath. I have my reasons."

-s-s-

Mission Vao bit down on her bottom lip and struggled not to cry out in pain.

One of her head tails had gotten trapped, wedged between her body and the side of the narrow conduit through which she crawled. Now she was stuck tight. Panic rose within her, clawing at her throat, and suddenly she was hyperventilating.

She had never been particularly claustrophobic; a childhood spent in large part as a stowaway meant that tight, dark spaces had been part and parcel of her early life. Now though, it was all she could do not to beat her fists against the enclosing metal walls and cry out franticly for help.

As she struggled for control, her heart raced crazily. She tried inhaling deep breaths to calm herself, but succeeded only in drawing clouds of dust into her nose and throat. The inner workings of the Ebon Hawk were hardly the cleanest of places. Suddenly her eyes were watering and she was fighting hard not to succumb to a sneezing fit.

At least it distracted briefly from the panic.

When she had finally regained a modicum of composure – though the occasional silent, stifled bout of coughing wracked her every now and again – she tried to back up a little. More pain, flaring from the trapped head tail, told her in no uncertain terms that this wasn't a good move. Forward, as she had already determined, was equally out.

_Okay nerf-herder, now what?_

Gradually she made herself relax, exhaling smoothly and forcing every last bit of air from her lungs to try and make herself absolutely as small as possible. Slowly the pressure on her hunched and bowed shoulders lessened a fraction. Her lungs began to burn though, and the need to breathe in grew rapidly.

It was a struggle to remain calm, using her fingers and toes to ever so gently ease herself forward. For a moment, there was resistance, more pain flaring from her trapped head tail. Then abruptly, she moved, and the head tail slid free. She'd made it round the corner, and could breathe again. It was an effort not to pant and suck more dust into her lungs. Her face felt as if it was streaked with tears and glued with dirt, and her head tail throbbed.

When she'd finally stopped herself shaking, she resumed her painstaking – and painful – forward crawl, sliding forward on her belly, inch by inch.

Seconds stretched to minutes. Minutes piled on top of each other. Repeatedly, she told herself that she needed to keep on going: just another few feet; just another few seconds. Except there was always a few feet, and a few seconds, more on top of that.

The pain from her drawn in shoulders gradually intensified – the conduit was so narrow that even like this they scraped both sides. Eventually it became a howling monster, far surpassing that from her abused and abraded head tail. She whimpered softly, clenching her teeth, hissing quietly. Groaning to herself, she started forward again.

Her head nudged against something hard and unyielding.

Tracing ahead, absolutely blind in the darkness, she felt around carefully with her fingers, determining after a moment or two's search that she'd reached the exit panel. Exhaling in relief, she slid the all-in-one tool from her sleeve and went to work on the securing bolts.

She'd snagged the tool when they'd allowed her out of her makeshift cell to use the toilet. When they'd tried to put her back in, she'd thrown a violently ostentatious tantrum, sending the Verpine's toolbox flying, and kicking the tool under the pallet that served as her bed. The big Trandoshan had clouted her one for her trouble, hard enough to make her head spin for several hours afterwards. She considered that a small price to pay though.

The first bolt came loose, and she went to work on the second.

After the tool had been secured, Mission had gone to work on the other elements of her escape plan. She'd stomped around the cell for hours on end, hurling tirades of abuse at anyone and everyone who came near. Afterwards, she'd thrown herself down on her bed, curled up into a ball, and sobbed, before pulling the sheets up over her head and lying completely motionless for hours. When someone – an intimidatingly beautiful Zeltron woman – had brought her a meal and tried to talk to her, she'd started up again with the tantrums and abuse, repeating the whole cycle. The idea was to desensitise anyone watching her, distracting their attention from what she was actually doing.

And there had been times when it hadn't been an act at all. Times when her thoughts had turned to Zaalbar and Juhani, and the darkness had swallowed her whole.

The second bolt came free.

She'd been able to tell when the Ebon Hawk had landed. The familiar sensations of atmospheric re-entry had jarred her from her shallow, dozing sleep. Now everything was still, and the quiet thrumming of electrics – along with the subtle, ever-present vibration that you didn't really notice when it was actually there – were gone.

Doubts had preyed. She had no idea where they were, or if escaping would even improve her position. Being stranded alone somewhere, like Korriban, or Sleheyron, or an isolated wilderness planet such as Dagobah, were not exactly ideal prospects. In the end though, she'd decided that she had to risk it. This might be the only chance that she got.

So she'd arranged the bed to look like she was in one of her silently sulking beneath the sheets phases and eased the wall panel she'd been working on all the way open. The narrow conduit behind it had been a _very_ tight fit. That seemed like hours ago now.

The third bolt came loose and she barely managed to catch the panel as it swung down on the one remaining bolt it was attached by. Suddenly her heart was racing again as she waited for the shout that would indicate the game was up.

Nothing. Absolute silence.

Mission peered out cautiously.

She was just above the Ebon Hawk's exit ramp, exactly as intended. Her ears strained, and she could here faint sounds of activity: distant speeders; mechanical unloaders and refuelers; other noises she couldn't quite place. A spaceport of some kind, though that was hardly news.

It could have been absolutely anywhere. The only thing she could see beyond the lowered ramp was empty, oil-stained plastocrete.

Carefully she began to squeeze herself out of the conduit. Everything suddenly seemed extremely loud: her breathing; her heartbeat; the scraping of her clothing against the conduit's sides. As the pressure on her eased and she was finally able to straiten out she winced. Resumed blood-flow to her extremities paradoxically made all the pain several-fold worse.

For a moment, she leant against the wall, flexing the muscles in her legs to ease the cramps in them. Then she turned, cautiously starting down the ramp.

She froze. Someone was standing, apparently waiting for her, just beyond the bottom of the ramp so that she hadn't been able to see them from the conduit.

"I told Rath we should have kept you on the _Shadow Dancer_." Kreed's artificial eye glowed bright red in the gloom.

-s-s-

Gently, but firmly, Yuthura disentangled herself from the circle of Tamar's arms and stood up.

His chest rose and fell steadily as he lay there on his back, watching her scarred beauty as she walked across to a storage compartment. The way she moved – the unconscious, effortless grace and poise – was absolutely extraordinary. He'd been aware of it before, of course, but he'd never really just stopped and done nothing but watch her, as he was doing now. It left him awestruck and amazed.

When she looked back, she was holding a couple of plastic water bottles. She flipped one to him, and it ended up nestled in the palm of his outstretched hand. He drank deeply. "Thank you."

A fractional smile touched her lips, although her eyes looked solemn. "You know," she said, voice whisper soft, "That was probably extremely unwise of us. But I'm very glad we did it."

"So am I."

Lowering the back of the pilots chair so it was almost flat, she draped herself across it, lying on her stomach with her chin propped on the back of her hands. Her head tails hung down, flexing languorously.

As some of the blissful lethargy wore off, Tamar became aware of something digging painfully into his hip. He winced, rolling over: one of the armour plates that Yuthura had worn over her jumpsuit. It had left a deep imprint in his skin, as for that matter had the deck – a kind of diamond criss-cross pattern that, as well as being distinctly uncomfortable, wasn't exactly aesthetically pleasing.

He stood up, stretching. He was able to feel Yuthura watching him as he moved to sit in co-pilot's seat beside her. "You know, right now, I think I might kill for a sonic shower. Or at the least perform acts of violence."

Her nose wrinkled. "We both need it." A considering pause. "I wonder how good a Defel's sense of smell is."

He chuckled. "Well, I didn't specify the use we were going to put their ship to. As long as we deliver it back in one piece they shouldn't have too much cause for complaint."

She smiled. Reaching out, their hands touched briefly together.

He trailed his fingers up the back of her arm to her shoulder, where he traced the intricate patterns of tattoos there. Her skin was smoother than a human's, firmer in texture and ever so slightly warmer. Her lekku twitched and coiled in a way that he thought signalled contentment. His hand strayed to the nearest, but hesitated. "Do you mind if I . . .?"

A low, throaty laugh emerged from the back of Yuthura's throat. "You know, after all we've just done together, I think it delights me that you'd feel the need to ask."

Her lekku seemed almost to throb, strong, muscular, and extraordinarily alive as it flexed beneath his touch. "Well, to be honest, I don't really have, um, much experience of Twi'leks and the proper etiquette . . ."

"You're doing fine . . ." A low, murmuring note emerged from her lips. "A little firmer. You don't have to be quite so . . . gentle. They won't break . . . yes, like that. Like that." Her eyes closed and he could sense her breathing quicken. His own quickened to match.

After a time she asked: "Tamar, you're what? Thirty years old?"

"Thirty-one." A slight pause. "At least, I think I am."

"And according to the memories the Jedi Council gave you, you were a career soldier?" Her eyes had opened halfway, heavy-lidded, watching his face.

He smiled fractionally. "Ten years. Infantry, then special operations. According to my memories, I signed up straight out of university on Deralia. Why?"

She gave an ever to tiny shake of her head. "Oh, no reason. It's just . . ." She shrugged. "I think the Jedi must have made you the only ten-year veteran infantry man in recorded history never to have indulged in the company of joygirls whilst on shore leave."

He snorted back startled laughter. "I hardly think that's anything like accurate. I mean, take Carth for instance. I can't see him . . ."

"Not after he was married, maybe. Besides, he's fleet. A pilot. Entirely different species . . ." She reached out – touched his shoulder lightly. "I'm sorry. You're blushing."

"You can tell, can you?" A rueful smile. "I didn't used to drink or gamble either, according to my memories. I guess the Council might have been . . . ever so slightly unrealistic in their interpretation of the average army recruit." There was a long pause and he released his hold on her head tail, grasping her hand instead, their fingers twining together. Her palm was hot and slick with sweat. "Still, they weren't _entirely_ prudish in the memories they chose to give me."

She looked unblinkingly into his eyes. "That must be . . . very, very strange, I think," she said after a while.

At length he nodded. "Yes." He shook his head slowly, struggling to put it into words. "Yes, it is. It's . . . well, they got it wrong. Utterly wrong. I don't know, I almost think it might have blown the deal entirely; I mean, if I hadn't found out the truth by now."

"How so?"

Tamar hesitated, unsure of himself. "Well . . . I have all the broad brush memories of what happened; these women I am supposed to have . . . been intimate with, but . . .." He trailed off, frowning slightly, struggling to put it into words. "The little details . . . they just aren't there. And it's the little details that are most important, at least in this. They're the things that are always going to be with me; that make it so special." A smile strayed across his lips. "The way your skin tastes, damp with sweat; the feel of your pulse, gradually slowing next to mine; the way your lekku move – the way they tickle as they brush across my chest; details like that. A million other tiny things." A pause, smile broadening to grin. "The complete loss of feeling in my arm from where you fell asleep on it; all the bruises on my backside from the armour plate I was lying on. Every last word of this weird conversation."

She laughed, sounding momentarily utterly delighted. Her free hand came up to his face, tracing across his cheekbones, then through each eyebrow in turn, seemingly trying to memorise it by touch. "A bed next time, you think then?"

He smiled. "I think a bed would be good. My buttocks at the least would be eternally grateful."

For a time they lay there in silence together. The lights from the skyrunner's instrument panel reflected in Tamar's face as he gazed out at the blankness of hyperspace.

"Something's troubling you," Yuthura said softly after a while.

He looked across at her.

"Don't say it's not important. I want to know your 'not important'."

"Just thinking more about memories, I suppose." He sighed, shaking his head. "Wondering how the Jedi Masters – Vandar and Zhar and the others – chose those they gave me. Did they select each one carefully, painstakingly designing them to teach me how to be a better person this time? Or is it all just a random collage thrown to together rapidly in desperation, and the hope that it didn't all go horribly wrong? Impossible to tell from this end, and I don't suppose it really matters."

She didn't say anything; just lightly touched his arm.

"I have this one particular memory right now, for some reason. Well, I guess I know the reason. I would be about ten years old, and I'm in class at school. There's this very pretty Twi'lek girl sitting in front of me – Jeela Nal, her name is, I think – and I'm sneaking up behind her. I've been given a dare, you see. And I'm not the kind of boy who's ever been able to pass up on a dare. I reach out, grabbing hold of one of her head tails and yanking on it, but before I can run away, she whirls around and slaps me across the face, so hard that I end up sprawled on my backside in the middle of the class, everybody looking at me. I got into so much trouble . . ."

Yuthura snorted. "Serves you right. If it had been me at that age I'd have done more than just slap you."

Tamar smiled. "I don't know why I have that memory, or if it was meant to teach me anything. For some reason I like to think that Master Zhar gave it to me." He trailed away to silence. "I don't know . . . it just makes me slightly sad that I never really knew a Jeela Nal, and this ten year old me – however much an obnoxious little Bantha-spit he was – didn't ever, truly exist." He shook his head. "Stupid and self-indulgent I know."

She looked very solemn again, all of a sudden. "No, not stupid." Their hands sought each other out again. "Tamar . . . I think, for people like us, the past, real or imagined, is something we have to just accept and then learn to let go off. I don't mean blot it out, or forget – just that the only real hope we have is to live in the present."

He squeezed her hand. "You know that you're extraordinary?"

Yuthura blinked a couple of times, then her gaze dropped.

"And now you're the one who's blushing."

"I'm nothing close to extraordinary." It was scarcely even a whisper, almost drowned out by the murmuring whisper of the skyrunner's controls.

"Yuthura, I know what I see when I look at you. I know what I feel. I . . ."

She made a soft noise that was almost a hiss, then touched her finger to his lips to stay him. "Please, Tamar, don't say that. Not right now." She let out a shuddering breath. "It's not that I don't want . . ." A frustrated shake of her head and she stopped, before starting over again. "For now, can we just leave what happened for what it was? Something that we both enjoyed, and have absolutely no regrets over. Something that was special in its own right, but doesn't have to be more than that."

He met her eyes, then nodded slowly. "Something that was special."

"It's not that I don't want more. That I don't want a future with you. I-I would like that very much indeed, if that's what you . . ." She stopped, baring her teeth in frustration. "Gah, at what point did I turn into a . . . a feeble-brained, weak-willed idiot? Why can't I say what I mean?"

"Friends?"

After a moment, she nodded. "You don't know how amazingly precious and important that is to me." Then she smiled. "Let's just see what happens. Enjoy it how we can."

-s-s-

"I knew you were up to something, blue." Kreed tapped the side of his head, beside his artificial eye. "Too cool, you see."

Mission said nothing. She didn't move, though the Mandalorian could see the tension in her posture. Her eyes flicked dartingly, this way and that. _Looking for somewhere to run_.

"Your temperature I mean." He took a careful, controlled step towards her, cutting down her options. "You're a good actress, I'll give you that. Might have fooled me, if I couldn't see your body temperature. Your face would have been that much hotter if those tantrums had been for real."

Another step.

"Could've said something, I suppose, but I was curious. Never even considered the conduits; too small I thought. You've got guts, no mistake."

Still she remained utterly silent. _If looks could kill, I'd be dead ten times over._ A trace of a smile touched his lips. "So if you want to turn around and walk back to your quarters, we can all remain nice and friendly about it."

Finally she did speak: a stream of invective of such venom and imagination that even Kreed was impressed – and learned a few things he hadn't considered before.

"Quite a mouth you've got, girl." He reached out to grab her shoulder with his cybernetic hand.

She moved, darting one way. Kreed went the other way, convinced it was a feint.

It wasn't. Or if it was, it was a double feint. She ran right past with him still flatfooted. His frantic grab closed only on empty air, missing her trailing head tail by at least a foot.

He whirled, just in time to see her diving behind a stack of packing crates. Grimly he started forwards, sending a mental signal to his cybernetic arm and causing a pair of disruptor units built into it to deploy. "Okay, listen up, blue. That was a mistake. I'll give you say, a three count, to rectify it. Then I come get you. Believe me when I say, you don't want that."

Again, he got the silent treatment. He bared his teeth, continuing his advance, watching carefully for signs of movement. "Ever seen someone shot with a disrupter before? Repeatedly, on a low setting, I mean. The pain makes you lose control of your bowels. Even if you're the toughest badass in the known universe. I've seen people thrash so much they break their own spines, or even bite through their tongues. So there we have a one."

He couldn't see any sign of her, even with the infrared from his artificial eye. He walked round slightly wider, on the alert for trouble. "You're thinking perhaps that we need you alive. Here's a news flash, blue. We don't. We need the _Hawk_. You were just a bonus. If you start being difficult – well, you stop being a bonus and start being a liability. And after one, we get to two. So I was always taught, at least."

He still couldn't pick up even the slightest sign of her, and he'd walked through about a hundred and twenty degrees of the circle he was tracing. "Maybe you're thinking I wouldn't do that; torture and kill such a pretty little girl. Ever thought that maybe I get off on torturing people? Especially pretty little girls. Seeing them writhe in pain and beg for mercy that just ain't coming. After all, with my injuries I don't have many other ways of getting off. Three."

A few more steps. "Last chance, blue. To make this easy on yourself."

She wasn't there. For a moment, Kreed was stultified. There wasn't anywhere she could have gone to that he wouldn't have seen.

Then he spotted the grate. She'd tried to close it behind her, perhaps using the sound of his voice as cover. It wasn't entirely flush to the surrounding plastocrete though.

Kreed stood over it, looking down at the service ducts that ran underneath the landing bay, just too tight for him to fit into. He wasn't quite sure whether he felt anger or admiration.

Then someone shot him in the back.

_Let's make that anger_.

He whirled, returning fire blind with his disrupters. There was a high-pitched yelp of pain as he hit something – a Rodian from the sound of it. A volley of blaster shots came back immediately, two impacting with the mechanical half of his torso and his legs respectively, but doing little more than melting the surface molecules of the metal. Quickly he scrambled behind the crates for cover.

_Why the hell did you think it was a good idea to come to Nar Shaddaa, Rath?_

He cursed quietly beneath his breath as he counted at least eight of them. One of them, who looked like an Echani mercenary from his attire, strayed into Kreed's line of sight, and he took a pot shot.

The man went down, rolling. Kreed didn't think he'd managed to penetrate his armour though, so he was far from out of the fight. Any thoughts of finishing him off were quickly removed by another volley of blaster shots that had him ducking back.

Kreed cursed again, more volubly than before. He hit his earpiece, activating the comm. channel. "Shak, gather the brothers and get back to the bay right now! Someone's trying to take the _Hawk_."

The only answer was a high-pitched squall of static. He was being jammed.

So it was going to have to be done the hard way.

-s-s-

Carth sat on the bunk disconsolately, staring down at the back of his hands. There was a holo-player, with a wide selection of vids, but he'd given up on that about an hour ago. He hadn't been able to concentrate enough for any of them to be more than an irritating background intrusion.

After a moment he stood up and started to pace. For about the forty-fourth time in the last couple of hours.

He'd half expected to end up occupying a cell in the _Long and Winding Way's_ brig, charged as a traitor. That hadn't happened. Instead, the boarding party that had met him and Jolee had been scrupulously polite, using words like 'please' and 'invite' and 'welcome'. It hadn't fooled him into thinking he had any option to turn down their polite 'suggestions' – the heavy weaponry they'd all been toting had quickly removed any thought of that – but it had been interesting that they'd felt the need to bother with the pretence.

The quarters he'd been shown to – these quarters – must have been those normally assigned to visiting dignitaries or diplomats, because they were a damn site better appointed than even the Captain's quarters on any military vessel he was familiar with. In essence he'd been told that he had the freedom of this entire deck, but wasn't allowed anywhere beyond.

Slowly he'd concluded that, when it boiled down to it, this was just a prettified version of the brig he'd been expecting. All his queries had been deflected, politely but emphatically. He'd learned in the region of a hundred new ways to be told to shut up and go away without anyone actually saying the words.

Very quickly he'd become ready to chew the walls.

He supposed he'd grown too accustomed to the war hero bit: people going out of their way for him; falling over themselves to give him what he wanted and keep him informed as to exactly what was going on. Now he was on the outside again, cut-off from the loop, and he found he didn't like it one little bit. A small, not very humorous smile quirked up one corner of his mouth. _Face it, Carth; you've turned into a spoilt brat._

A familiar voice intruded on his maundering thoughts.

". . . of hush now, child, please . . ."

"But, Master Bindo, surely . . ."

Carth stepped out of his room. "Master Bindo?" he enquired, half-incredulous. The conversation cut off abruptly. Three pairs of eyes turned his way.

"Run along, run along." Jolee made vague shooing gestures to the pair of – to Carth's eyes – frighteningly young and naïve looking Jedi flanking him on either side. "I have to speak to the grumpy old man, here."

"Grumpy old man?" Carth asked, seething, once they were alone.

"Well, you vetoed young pup, as I recall. And that's what you're turning into, when it comes right down to it. At least I have the excuse of thirty-odd extra years and aching joints."

Carth drew in a deep breath. The counting-to-ten method had never really worked that well with him. Instead of releasing the anger, it tended to focus it. "I'll say again, _Master bloody Bindo_?"

"Just a figure of speech perhaps? Surprising as it may seem, some young people do know how to speak politely to their elders."

"No, no, no. That's not it at all. They called you Master Bindo, as a title, and they meant it."

Jolee just shrugged.

"I suppose I should be congratulating you. How long have you been part of the Order again?"

"I think it must about five – no, make that six – months now."

"Six months?" Carth struggled to modulate his voice. "And Jedi Master. Wow, that's quite a promotion. I thought you said the Order was dead for you?"

Another disingenuous shrug. "A conversation I had around that time convinced me I was being . . . a bit of an ass."

"A bit of an ass? Well you said it." Carth wasn't sure why he felt so angry and betrayed, but he did.

"I came to the conclusion that I had more chance of changing something I disagreed with by engaging with it rather than running off in a hissy fit. And that in any case, our areas of agreement were slightly larger than those on which we disagreed. Don't say I'm not able to admit it when I'm wrong."

Carth made a snorting noise. "So that would be thirty years on Kashyyyk, would it? You didn't think, maybe, that this was something that you might want to share with the rest of us?"

"Not particularly, no." The absolute blandness of Jolee's tone was infuriating.

"You know, curiously enough, I don't particularly appreciate being lied to by somebody I thought I could trust."

"Oh, come on, I never lied to you. And I wasn't exactly hiding it either. If you'd come out and asked . . . oh I don't know, something like 'Jolee my good man, I was just wondering, but have you by any chance rejoined the Jedi Order' I would have come right out and said, 'Why yes Carth, as a matter of fact I have'. No hesitation at all."

"Right." He almost felt like screaming, and dignity be damned. "Does Tamar know?"

Jolee's expression took on a musing look. "Possibly. I dare say he's not nearly as stupid as he looks. Kind of couldn't be really, when you think about it."

"But you haven't told him either." Suddenly a connection sparked inside Carth's head. "Wait a minute, I get it. You've been given the job of watching him, haven't you? He's still the venomous snake as far as you and the Order are concerned."

"He told you about that, did he?" He sighed and shook his head. "Anyway that's . . . rather a harsh interpretation. I was assigned to _help_ him."

Another connection followed on rapidly behind the first. "And you're the reason the _Winding Way_ was able to find us back there on Suvam's station. You called them there." A faint note of outrage crept into Carth's voice.

"Now why would I do that?" Jolee asked.

"Ha! That wasn't a denial, was it? I'm starting to get the way you Jedi do things."

"There's no fooling you, is there?" Jolee directed a long-suffering look his way. "Now, I got the impression you wanted to ask me something. Before you started having hysterics over trifling little details."

Carth bit down on his immediate response. Finally, he let out a pent up breath. "Do you know where we're going?"

Jolee's response was bland. "We're going to Manaan."

"Manaan?"

"Manaan," Jolee agreed. "Now, was there anything else you wanted? Because otherwise I think I'm going to have a nap."

For a moment, Carth said nothing. Then, echoing Jolee's tone of earlier on: "Jolee, my good man, I was just wondering. Into which of your orifices, precisely, would you like me to shove my blaster?"

-s-s-

"Well?"

Mission looked at the man sitting behind the desk carefully.

He was a human, carrying about fifty pounds too much flesh. His broad face was surrounded by long, dirty-looking blonde dreadlocks, his eyes concealed behind a green-tinted visor that plugged into implant slots either side of his skull. His dress sense tended towards garish leathers and silks, and from the look of things, had no more than a passing acquaintance to the wash. It wasn't exactly flattering to his figure either. As of yet he hadn't looked up from the datapad he was reading.

He fitted the description.

She tried to sound confident and in control. As opposed to lost and scared. "You're Harren, right? I've come about a package. I was told you were the person to speak to."

"A package? I think you're mistaken. Take a look at the sign outside. I'm not in the delivery business." The man didn't bother to look up.

"Yeah? Well Gulthep said you could set me up. The Chuba face was lying, was he?"

Finally, Harren deigned to look up. "Chuba face? I like that. That's Gulthep to a tee . . ." He blinked as he got a proper look at Mission. A slow smile spread across his face, revealing a plethora of gold-capped teeth.

_Urgh._ Mission couldn't see the look in his eyes, but from the rest of his expression, she hardly needed to. An indrawn breath. Still, if it got her what she wanted, she could put up with this sleaze letching over her. "So, about this package . . ." She managed not to append any of the insults she was thinking.

"And what type of _package_ are you looking for . . . my dear."

"The standard kind." She tried to sound tough, inwardly boiling. _And I'm not your dear, Hutt-slug_. "Ident that'll stand up to space-port customs."

Harren nodded slowly, his eyes still fixed on her. She could feel their gaze like crawling worms. "And you can pay for that, can you?"

"You make a habit of insulting your customers?" She left the insult she wanted to add off, though she didn't succeed in keeping her voice from rising noticeably in pitch. Her head tails writhed indignantly.

He smiled again. "No insult intended. It's just . . . you're slightly younger than my average customer."

"I'm plenty old enough. I'm not just some kid."

"Oh, I can see _that_." The tone of his voice made her flesh creep.

"Look, I have the money, okay? Five hundred credits, right?"

After escaping from the landing pad that held the _Hawk_, the first thing Mission had done was break into a number of spaceport lockers. That had netted her a change of clothing, a couple of hundred credits, and – hitting the jackpot on the third locker she tried – a working blaster.

Being street smart on Taris did not necessarily make one street smart on Nar Shaddaa. It did, however, at least give you a start. In many ways Nar Shaddaa was a lot like Taris's lower city made big. Gangs, smugglers, criminals of every order, some of them wearing uniforms and pretending to be police. Everything on a larger, more dangerous, more glossily sleazy scale.

Wandering alone through the rain drenched thoroughfares, Zaalbar's absence had really hit home hard, and she hadn't been able to hold back the tears. At least the rain had made those tears private, despite the crowds around her.

A spacer had tried to mug, or otherwise assault her, right in the middle of the street. He'd been too roaringly drunk to be coherent enough for her to tell which, and he certainly hadn't anticipated her ability to fight back. She'd left him unconscious in a gutter after lifting several more credits and a vibro-knife. It had refocused her mind, and given her an object lesson about the nature of Nar Shaddaa – just because you had several dozen witnesses around you didn't mean you were remotely safe, or could expect any degree of help.

In the third cantina she'd tried, she'd found Gulthep. A drink, a smile, a few flattering words, while biting back her desire to simple pull her blaster on him, had gotten her Harren's name and address.

Lifting purses from drunks was not a particularly dignified activity, and she certainly wasn't something she was proud of. But two hours of it had netted her the extra three hundred she required.

And here she was.

"Five hundred isn't enough. You need another two-fifty on top."

"Hey! Do I look like I just crawled out from under a Roopa Tree? Gulthep told me the price."

"Gulthep told you the discounted price. The price for those who are . . . connected. Something tells me you aren't connected."

She knew what he meant right away. Connected. Part of the Exchange – the galaxy spanning crime syndicate. "Well hey, I think you can see fit to extending that discount to me as well. Don't you?"

"I'd love to, sweetness." Another flash of gold teeth. "But here's the thing. I can't. The Exchange gets a discount. If I give you a discount, and they find out about it, then I have to discount from that figure. Which I just can't afford."

Mission tilted her head to one side, forcing a smile that made it feel as if her face was ripping in two from the effort – trying to appear winsome. "I won't tell them if you don't."

He laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "They'll find out. They always find out. Besides, I'm an honest – and honourable – businessman. I don't tell lies."

_Right_. She glared at him.

"Of course," he went on. "I might be persuaded to accept . . . other forms of collateral in lieu of the extra credits."

As she kept on looking at him, Mission's skin went cold. Like ice. She tried to comfort herself by picturing Zaalbar picking him up by the throat and ripping his arms from their sockets. Except . . . in the circumstances it wasn't much of a comfort.

Finally, she managed another smile. "Other forms of collateral?" She stepped forward until she was standing directly in front of his desk, leaning against it and fluttering her eyes. "I . . . I think I could manage that."

His return smile was truly repulsive, making her shudder inwardly. His face moved close to hers, and she could smell his breath: a flowery and artificial freshener that didn't quite mask the underlying sourness. "I'm glad we understand each other. There's no need for things to be . . . difficult."

"So if, for example, I were to save your life . . ."

"Save my life . . .? What . . .?" Behind the lenses of his green-tinted visor, she saw his eyes start to widen.

She jammed her stolen Zabrak Tystel model blaster – normally her preference was for smaller, more easily concealed weaponry: hold outs; Bothan needlers or even Sith assassin pistols, but beggars couldn't be choosers – up beneath Harren's chin. His jaw clamped shut with a loud click.

"Like right now. When I save that sack of Bantha-poodoo you have for brains from being fried, by not pulling this trigger. Granted, I doubt that anyone would pay you two-hundred and fifty credits for it. But hey, I kind of figure that for you it might have . . . what d'you call it? Added sentimental value."

Harren held his hands up and drew back slightly, as far as her blaster would allow. "Hey, there's no need for that. Just trying to be friendly."

"When I want your 'friendship' I'll let you know." She bit the words out. "Just so we're clear. We have a deal – five hundred credits and me saving your life, like I generously just have, for a standard ident package."

He looked at her resentfully; said nothing.

She gestured with the blaster.

"Yeah, we have a deal," he finally agreed. "Any preference on your new name?" The words dripped with venom.

Before Mission could respond, she heard the shop's door open behind her. "He's closed. Come back in the morning." She didn't look round, keeping her gun fixed on Harren in case he tried something.

"It's not Mr. Harren we're here to see." The slight, warbling note in the speaker's voice told her that it was a Rodian, speaking basic. _Uh oh_.

"No, it's you we want to talk to," a second voice put in, this one almost certainly human. "Mission Vao."

"Never heard of her."

"Oh, come now. I thought everyone – short of possibly a few hermits on Dagobah – had heard of Mission Vao. One of the heroes of the Star Forge and saviours of the Republic."

"Take a walk, Harren," the Rodian added.

"Hey, this is my shop. No one tells me what . . .."

"Seboba would be _very_ grateful." The human this time.

"In case you hadn't noticed she's got a gun in my face . . ."

Harren's words were cut off by a blaster bolt to the head. He toppled backwards with a resounding crash, his dreadlocks smouldering. Mission couldn't suppress a yelp of shock.

"Now, Miss Vao," the human continued. "Perhaps you'd be so good as to lose the gun and turn around slowly."

"Let me guess. Seboba would be _very_ grateful." With a resigned sigh, she tossed the blaster aside and did as instructed.

"Thank you." The man was dark-haired and leanly handsome. Something about his eyes, and the slightly mocking smile that played across his lips, made her take an instant dislike to him. "This doesn't have to be unpleasant. All that Seboba wants is the chance to meet you. Then he'll arrange passage for you to wherever you might want to go."

"Tell this _Seboba_ that I'm flattered, but I really am quite busy. But hey, it's nice to know I have a fan club and all. I'll let him have a signed holo-print if he likes."

He smirked. "You misunderstand. That was phrased as a request out of politeness. You don't really have a choice in the matter."

Mission's gaze flicked across to the Rodian. He held a pair of pistols trained on her, and the way his antennae kept twitching left her feeling distinctly nervous. She got the impression that she might end up being shot by accident. "So, who exactly is this Seboba then?"

"How about we leave it as a surprise? I often think there aren't enough surprises in life . . ."

The shop window exploded in a shower of glass. Mission got a blurred impression of a hulkingly large form, and blaster bolts started flying. The Rodian went down, shot in the head, but by then she was diving for her blaster and didn't see the rest of it.

When she came up again, the dark-haired man had also been terminally dealt with.

"Hey, blue." Kreed gave her a fractional nod of acknowledgement. Rain poured in through the broken window around him, splashing on the floor. Droplets of water gleamed on his metal limbs, running down in rivulets.

As she aimed her blaster at him, she felt her heart sink. "Back off."

He made no move to comply. "You stabbed me right through the torso with a vibro-sword. How much d'you think that thing's gonna do?"

She lifted it a fraction so it pointed at his head rather than the centre of his chest. "I'm willing to find out."

Kreed smiled; bared his teeth. He nodded towards the two corpses. "Do you really want to do this with about thirty of their friends in the immediate neighbourhood, closing in on this position as we speak?"

"Maybe I'll take that chance." Her jaw clenched, chin thrusting out in determination. The blaster didn't waver even a fraction.

Before Kreed could respond, a volley of blaster shots tore through the broken window, sending them both diving instinctively for cover. They stitched a line of charred holes in the wall directly behind them.

For a short period, the only sound was the drumming of falling rain. Then there was a shout from somewhere close by, outside. A moment later came the sound of running footsteps, splashing through puddles on the plastocrete.

"Least I've got no interest in trying to kill you," Kreed told her quietly.

"Yeah?" Mission's tone was unflinching as she met his gaze. "Well I've got every interest in killing you!"

The footsteps slowed down, right outside the shop. A voice ordered caution. They were close enough that she could hear their breathing.

Her eyes remained locked with Kreed's – real and artificial alike. Finally, Mission let out a breath and nodded once, lowering her blaster.

-s-s-

"What do you think?" Tamar asked.

Yuthura stared at the sensor display in front of her. Every now and then her head tails gave a distracted, twitching flick. "We can still run if we want to. We'll have to make it quick though. Thirty seconds and it'll be in range to establish a tractor lock."

The Republic frigate, _Long and Winding Way,_ had dropped out of hyperspace several minutes ago.

There had been a moment where Tamar had tried – and comprehensively failed – to convince himself that its arrival was a coincidence, and they could bluff their way out. There was no getting away from it though. It had arrived in the exact spot, and within half an hour of the time, of where the _Morgana_ should have shown up if it had left the Ando system immediately on receiving the signal they'd sent.

"_I repeat, vessel identifying itself as the _Ajunta's Blade, _this is the Republic heavy frigate _Long and Winding Way_. Please respond_."

Tamar grimaced but made no immediate move to answer. On the plus side, although the Frigate's shields were up, the _Winding Way's_ posture – and the language it was using – was not overtly aggressive.

"What would we do if we ran, anyway?" Yuthura asked him quietly.

He nodded slowly.

"In the end we went to Dantalus to find intelligence that would get the Republic looking in the right direction. That's not going to happen if we keep running."

"Always assuming we got anything useful," he muttered, mainly to himself.

She smiled. "How about a little optimism, Tamar?"

"I just . . .. You're clear on what the likely consequences of us surrendering are going to be?"

"I'm grateful for the time we had. Nothing can change it. Nothing can take it away." She swallowed heavily, looking away from him, towards the approaching Republic frigate. "But there are superseding considerations."

He opened his mouth, but realised he had no argument to make. "Try and keep beyond the edge of their tractor range while we talk. I want to make sure they'll at least look at what we've got before we give ourselves up."

A tiny, almost inaudible noise escaped her throat. Tamar glanced sideways at her and saw that her teeth were bared in what was almost a snarl. He sensed anger from her, though it was inwardly directed. Swiftly, it was replaced by calm. Something that approximated to calm, at least. They made eye contact. Suddenly her hand sought his out, gripping it fiercely for a moment.

No words were said. Her attention returned fully to the controls in front of her.

"Vessel identifying itself as the Ajunta's . . ."

Taking a deep breath, Tamar flicked a switch to open a channel. "Acknowledged. This is the _Ajunta's Blade_, _Long and Winding Way_."

The voice changed from the person doing the hailing. "Captain Frommel Greth speaking." The name was vaguely familiar to Tamar – someone who'd fought at battle of the Star Forge, possibly. "Might I know who I'm addressing?"

"This is Jedi Knight . . ." A slight hesitation as he wondered briefly whether he still had any right to that title. "Tamar De'Nolo, formerly known as Revan. I am in possession of intelligence I believe to be of value to the Republic, and would like to arrange the terms for its handover."

There was a pause of a second or so before a response came.

"Is that so . . . Jedi Tamar?"

"Oh, give it here. Let me talk to them . . ."

Tamar and Yuthura shared a look as Jolee's voice tetchily interrupted the captain and floated across the comm. link.

-s-s-

"So, this Seboba? You know who he is?" Mission flushed, regretting her words even before she'd finished speaking. Her jaw clamped shut, and she turned her face away, heat flaring in her cheeks.

She and Kreed were hiding in the back of a garbage skiff.

They'd spent the past day and a bit desperately fleeing – and when forced, fighting running battles – through the vast, vertical city's multitude of levels. The numbers of Seboba's men were seemingly endless, and they always seemed to be one-step ahead, there waiting wherever they tried to escape to. Local law enforcement, assuming that there was anything of the sort, must have been bought off. They certainly made no move to intervene, despite several lengthy and very public shoot-outs.

After a tense and deadly game of cat and mouse through Nar Shaddaa's sewer system, the two of them had narrowly managed to slip through the rapidly closing net just as it had seemed that this time they would be overwhelmed. They'd been here for the last . . . Two hours? Three? More or less? Crouching in stinking near-darkness, unspeaking; waiting.

Harsh vibrations passed incessantly through the garbage skiff's hull, its engines in urgent need of servicing. Mission's head was throbbing from it, making her already frazzled nerves and temper that much worse. It smelled as if something had died near her – not altogether unlikely; murder and assassination were hardly unknown on Nar Shaddaa, and the bodies had to be disposed of somehow. She hadn't felt much like sorting through the piles of refuse to confirm her suspicions though.

"Finally found your tongue then?"

She didn't say anything – didn't so much as look at him.

He made an exasperated noise. "Listen blue, I understand why you hate me. I shot your friend. The Wookiee. But it's getting in the way. If the positions had been reversed; if it was one of your comrades being threatened, you wouldn't have hesitated for an instant."

She found herself literally shaking with rage, too angry to speak. It took all the restraint she could muster to stop from hurling herself at him and trying to rip out his throat.

"Right now we need to cooperate . . ."

"Unlike, you, you murdering . . ." She was almost snarling. "We don't attack and slaughter rescue teams answering distress calls! So you can take your _pathetic_ self-justifications and shove them straight up your . . ."

"Fine." Kreed's red eye glowed unblinkingly in the gloom. "I'm scum. I'm not arguing. But we need to stay focused and keep co-operating if we're . . ."

"I'm focused just fine. I'm co-operating aren't I?" _Right up until the point I get chance to gut you_.

"Yeah, so far. But I can see you glowing, blue. And you're getting brighter and hotter by the minute, all that fury winding itself up good and tight. If you keep it up you're going to snap and get both of us killed."

"Maybe I consider that a fare trade." It was scarcely a whisper, though she had come to know that Kreed's enhanced hearing would pick it up easily enough.

He grunted. "Then you're the biggest sucker born, kid. I'm forty-eight. A merc. I'm going to die soon enough. I should've died already, pretty much. You've got an entire lifetime, and you're going to give that up for someone like me? Pure idiocy."

"Just shut up! Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!"

A snorting laugh. "As I recall, you were the one who asked a question."

"Which _you_ haven't answered." Again, she cursed herself for not keeping quiet.

Kreed nodded. "Right enough, there. I haven't." She saw him grimace. "Seboba's a Hutt. Not all that surprising, given our proximity to Nal Hutta. He's part of the Exchange. A very big part, in more ways than one."

"So what does he want with me?" Something moved in the garbage piles, making them rustle and drawing her gaze. They shared the garbage skiff with any number of small, rodent-like vermin.

"You're famous blue. Smart, beautiful, resourceful. Such a sweet and pleasant nature. Who wouldn't want your company?"

She folded her arms across her chest, gritting her teeth in her struggle not to rise to the obvious bait. Her head tails quivered erratically, making her feelings plain enough.

"What d'you think he wants?"

"Revan." Her voice was quietly disconsolate.

"Yeah."

"That's what you want too, isn't it? Did he carve you up like that in the Mandalorian Wars? Or was it just one of his Jedi?"

Kreed didn't answer. He seemed to be staring through her rather than at her.

"So now you want revenge, or to salvage honour by dying at his hand. You Mandalorians are pathetic."

"What would you know about . . ." He trailed off and sighed. "Ah, yes. The great General Ordo. I hear he's working with the Republic these days." Kreed shook his head. "How the mighty have fallen."

"Hey! That's a damn sight better than being a murdering two bit merc."

"I was talking about us Mandalorian's generally, kid. Myself included. Once . . ." He clamped his jaw shut, face going tight. When he spoke again, the subject had changed completely. "Wasn't Revan who carved me up, or any of his Jedi. Do you really think I could have survived these sort of injuries if I'd taken them on the battlefield?"

"So what happened to you then?"

"Why the interest all of a sudden? Thought you didn't want to talk."

Mission didn't answer right away, feeling her cheeks flush again. "Yeah? Perhaps I just want to hear about you suffering."

She saw him shrug. "Fair enough. I used to work for a man called Arven Kodos; he was Exchange, like Seboba. I was . . . muscle."

Mission made a noise. "Are any of you Mandalorians ever anything else?"

He stopped. Then, after a pause. "War is what we are." A shrug. "It's all we have now. I won't claim there's much honour in it, but I won't apologise for it either. Arven managed to make the mistake of getting on Seboba's bad side, so Seboba had him squashed. I killed more than twenty of Seboba's men, including his favourite lieutenant, before they got to Arven. I was knocked unconscious and captured."

Kreed stopped again, staring off at something she couldn't see. Mission began to think the story was over. Her head throbbed in time to the vibrations from the skiff's engines.

"I woke up in a stasis cell. Apparently, Seboba was not best pleased with me. Death by a thousand cuts is what I got. They chopped me up, piece by piece, ever so careful to keep me alive, and I got to watch my flesh being fed to a Rancor cub. That satisfy your taste for my suffering, blue?"

"My name's Mission. Not blue. Or kid." Despite herself, she felt ever so slightly sick. "How'd you get out?"

"That would be down to Rath." Another long pause. "Rath had done a job for Seboba, you see, but Seboba was reluctant to pay the agreed upon fee. Circumstances had changed, or something, and the results of the job were no longer as useful to Seboba as he'd originally thought. Rath, of course, couldn't let that stand. I guess it was just luck that meant he raided the facility where I was being held. He had Ygress rebuild me into something vaguely useful, and I've served him ever since."

"Ygress is the Verpine?"

"Yeah; one crazy ass bug, that one. But useful for building things. Better than new in some respects." She saw him grimace again. "We never should have come here. I told Rath. Seboba has a long memory. Of course, that slime-gulper was going to be watching for us, waiting for an opportunity. Which we've gone and given him."

"My heart bleeds."

A dark laugh. "Yeah. When it comes to it, it might well do."

She bared her teeth; very nearly hissed. "Tamar's going to gut you. And hey, I'm gonna enjoy watching when that happens."

"Tamar . . .? Oh yeah. That's what Revan's calling himself these days."

"If you can't even beat some Hutt crime lord . . ."

"Oh, Rath has his ways. Took care of you're Jedi friend on Taris easily enough, didn't he? People tend to underestimate Rath. Usually only once though."

At mention of Juhani, Mission glared daggers at him. She felt a tight, uncomfortable sensation in her chest; sucked in deep breaths to try to calm herself.

"Yeah, but I agree. Revan's gonna be a different type of challenge altogether. Saw him once, you know? Facing the Mandalore in single combat and winning. We lost the war that day, inside our heads." A sigh, which she thought contained regret. "I was one of the Mandalore's personal guard. The best and brightest, for at least a while."

"Shouldn't you have killed yourself then? I mean, after failing to protect your lord. Isn't that the way it works when a Mandalorian has no honour left."

He directed a long hard look her way, and if she wasn't so thoroughly tired and miserable she might have smiled – able to see that she'd finally managed to get under his skin. "Someone's been paying too much attention to bad holo-novels."

Before she could respond there was a harsh grinding noise, and the garbage skiff jolted to a halt. A pile of garbage started to topple towards her, but she narrowly managed to roll aside.

Kreed was looking down at something on the wrist of his artificial arm. "Looks like we made it then. And two minutes ahead of schedule too."

-s-s-

Tamar looked up as the door to his room – or cell, which was the alternative way of looking at it – opened with a whisper.

A woman stood there, dressed the traditional robes of a Jedi Knight. She was hard and tough looking, stern faced with dark hair scraped back into a ponytail. Very much a warrior. Vaguely attractive, but that came a long way down the list of things people tended to notice about her, and it wasn't something she went out of her way to emphasise.

"Jedi Belaya." He greeted her with a nod.

"Tamar . . . You do still prefer Tamar to Revan?"

He didn't miss the barb, hidden none too subtly, in her words. "Still Tamar," he agreed.

"And still not wearing the robes, or respecting the traditions, I see."

He almost smiled at the reminder of their first encounter, in the courtyard of the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. "Funnily enough, although Jedi robes do tend to guarantee an enthusiastic welcome among the Sith, it wasn't really the sort I was looking for."

She raised an eyebrow, her nostrils flaring – as near to an expression of humour as he could recall from her.

They'd never really gotten along very well when they'd known each other during Tamar's crash re-education in the Jedi ways on Dantooine. Only her gratitude for his helping of Juhani had kept things relatively polite and civil between them, and even that seemed coloured by its own special flavour of resentment.

And now of course, she had very good reason to detest him.

"Is there something I can do for you, Belaya?" he asked, quietly and politely.

The look she gave him was appraising: not friendly, but not openly hostile either. "I came to return this to you."

Tamar blinked in surprise as he accepted the lightsaber from her grasp. It was his all right. He recognised the scars and dents in the plain metal of its hilt from all the action it had seen. "Thank you."

"Admiral Dodonna gave it into my possession on the understanding that it would be passed onto you at the first available opportunity."

"Does this mean I'm not about to be immediately shipped off to a Republic prison facility?"

Her lips twisted. "I think anyone that way inclined is more likely to simply shoot you on sight at this point."

"And you?" he asked her quietly.

For a time she just looked at him. He got the sense of conflicting emotions beneath the surface, tightly contained. "Juhani trusts and admires you," she said at length. "And I trust in her judgment."

He nodded.

"But if I find any hint of a suggestion that you betrayed us, or had any anything to do with the Council's murder . . ."

"You'll join the back of a very long queue who want to rip their own personal chunk out of me. By the time you get your turn I doubt there'll be that much left."

She made a noise that might have been laughter.

He gestured to the door. "Can I leave here now?"

She looked at him slightly strangely. "As far as I'm aware there have never been any restrictions placed on your movement."

With something approaching startlement, he realised she was right. No one had explicitly stated that he couldn't leave. He'd just assumed. Like an idiot. "Then I'd like to see Yuthura. Do you know where she is?"

"The Sith defector, you mean?"

"The Twi'lek woman who was accompanying me," he corrected firmly.

"I believe she's still being . . . debriefed by Marshall." She gave a disinterested shrug.

"Marshall?" Tamar developed a sinking feeling inside his chest.

"The senior Republic intelligence officer assigned to this mission by Admiral Dodonna. He's somebody quite high up, I gather. He didn't seem at all pleased to learn that she hadn't gone through any formalised eval or threat assessment process."

"You don't like her." That was clear enough from the feelings he was picking up from her.

She shrugged, though her expression looked tight. "We are too lenient on the traitors who joined the Sith cause, accepting them back into the fold with a wave of the hand and an 'all is forgiven.'"

"What would you have us do instead?" he asked, carefully neutral.

"There should be at least some consequences; some punishment . . .. Some justice."

"And you honestly think there is not?" Something flashed inside him. "You think everyone who shows the strength and willingness to come back to us should be carted off to prison, or something?" He stopped, forcing himself to calm down. He wasn't seeking an argument.

Belaya was looking at him strangely. "You know, I think that's the first time I've seen even a hint of anger from you. The first crack in the perfect Jedi façade."

Tamar barely managed to keep himself from gaping; shook his head. "Perfect Jedi façade . . .? You _are_ talking about me here?"

He saw her cheeks colour. "You always made everything look so infuriatingly easy. The things that everyone else takes years of grindingly hard work to even become halfway proficient in, you pick up and master in about an hour flat. And there was never any turmoil, never any . . ."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. "I think you must have been watching someone else. Perfect? I'm about as far from that as it's possible to get. And as for turmoil . . ." He trailed off. "Look, do you know where I can find this Marshall . . ."

"You care about her, don't you?" she said eventually.

Tamar attempted to intuit something from her expression and tone, but failed. "Yes, I do."

Belaya hesitated. "You'd be better off speaking to Master Bindo." She started to turn away.

_Master Bindo?_ After a moment he realised he wasn't actually that surprised.

"Wait," he said as she reached the door. "Have they managed to extract anything from the data core we brought back? Are they making use of T3 like I . . ."

She stopped, turning back. "Look, I don't have time for your questions." It came out as a snap. "I came here to return your lightsaber, and I've done that. Now I have to prepare for Taris . . ."

"Taris?"

Belaya looked annoyed at herself for letting that slip. "There was a raid there. A survey team was attacked. Juhani is one of the missing. I've volunteered to head a scouting mission to investigate what happened. Now if you'll excuse me . . .?"

He just nodded as he digested the news.

Surprisingly she hesitated a moment longer. "You have no idea what it's like to love someone whose heart you know you'll truly never have, do you?"

For a moment, he was too nonplussed by the question to respond. Then he said: "I know that Juhani cares about you."

A snort. "Yes she cares. She feels fondness and affection, and even friendship. But it is not love. Her heart remains sealed to me. Sometimes I think I would prefer indifference. It would be easier to handle."

She looked away again, and he could tell she was furious with herself. "But of course, you know nothing of that. Because you have _it_. That charm and charisma that makes everyone flock to you, dazzled and compelled. You're the one who's loved. Not the one left alone, forgotten in the shadows. You have everything I don't."

Before he could say anything, she was gone.

-s-s-

Mission flipped sideways, head tails flying out behind her. The pair of blaster pistols she was carrying – the second recovered from the body of a badly scarred Gran who'd tried to ambush them – blazed. She heard the Echani mercenary yelp, falling back down the flight of stairs behind him with a clatter.

She made it to the cover of a thick plastocrete pillar, wincing as the volley of blaster and disrupter fire aimed her way blew chunks out of it. Her breath came short and fast, and she could feel her skin prickling uncomfortably, slick with sweat. The air inside the power station's vast turbine hall was heavy with latent static. Worse, the constant rumbling whine of the turbines themselves covered up the sound of approaching foes.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement and span.

Another of the Echani mercs, leaping down at her from above, slender double-bladed sword flashing brightly as it caught the light . . .

She got a close up view as a shot from one of Kreed's disrupters tore through the Echani's personal shield as if it wasn't there, hitting him in the neck. Flesh ruptured and blood flew, splattering across Mission's face. She flinched back, gagging.

"Bunch of prancing fops," she heard Kreed mutter. Then: "Look alive, blue. I can't be watching your back all the time."

Mission gritted her teeth, seething, but before she could retort the Mandalorian had already turned his back on her. She saw the heavy shielding surrounding him flicker and crackle as it repelled blaster fire – in action he was a bit like watching something with the armour and firepower of a heavy assault walker compressed down to human size.

He lobbed a thermal detonator back behind them, the explosion thunderous as it tore through metal like tissue paper. Screams and cries of pain rang out, the air acrid with smoke and flame.

"The roof!" he yelled back at her, but she was already off and running. Intermittently, she fired back behind herself almost blind in an effort to distract as she sprinted up the steps.

They made it to the level of catwalks strung over the vast, baroque, cathedral-like hall, though more of Seboba's men were pouring into the power station by the moment.

"This was a good idea, was it, can-head?" Mission snapped at Kreed as a stray blaster shot ricocheted of the railing beside her. Ducking down, she fired back over her shoulder, the shots crackling of yet another Echani's energy shield.

"This is where I arranged for the brothers to pick us up." His tone was noncommittal. He aimed and fired at a mixed grouping of humans, Rodians and Aqualish several hundred feet below, sending them scampering for cover.

Mission had heard 'the brothers' being mentioned several times before, but unless it was simply the collective name that the mercenaries in Rath Gannaya's employ used, she didn't think she's seen them. Probably they'd been berthed on the other ship – the _Shadow Dancer_.

She started to ask Kreed who the hell the brothers were, but he was too preoccupied to answer.

He had another thermal detonator in hand and seemed to be preparing to drop it into one of the vast turbines that helped transform Nar Shaddaa's endless supply of garbage into energy.

"No . . ." she started, but Kreed just smiled at her.

"Better run, blue," he said. Then he let the thermal detonator drop.

She was already sprinting hard, trying to keep low as blaster bolts sizzled through the air around her.. Kreed's footsteps were like thunder as they pounded close behind her, making the entire walkway shake so violently that it seemed about to break.

She'd managed to reach a count of five when the thermal detonator went off.

The initial explosion was surprisingly small and restrained, at least by the standards of what she'd been expecting. A moment later, though, there was a harsh, banshee wailing noise accompanied by an ear-splitting screech of grinding metal.

A second detonation followed, vastly bigger than the first.

Mission felt her ears pop at the sudden change of pressure. A wall of hot wind slammed into her back and she had to grab hold of the railing tightly as her feet lifted off the walkway.

When the roaring noise in her ears had faded, and the footing beneath her had become something approximating to stable, Mission realised that the blaster fire from down below ceased – for the moment at least. After a short period of quiet, where the only thing to be heard was the crackling of flames from the turbine hall floor, fire alarms began to blare stridently. Arrays of sprinklers went off overhead, soaking her to the skin in seconds. At least it washed off some of the stink from the garbage skiff.

A door blocked the way in front of them.

Mission started work on the lock immediately, but Kreed barged her aside. Her indignant protest trailed off as he simply looked at a particular spot right above the lock, then thumped it just _so_ with his metal fist. It sprang open immediately.

Another couple of flights of stairs and they emerged onto the power station's roof.

It was nighttime. Or second night, as Nar Shaddaa's odd day-night cycle, tide-locked with Nal Hutta, had it. It was the first time that Mission had glimpsed the sky in hours. Skyscrapers towered above them on every side, twisted metal fingers glowing with neon light. A truly titanic refuelling spire seemed to stretch on up forever. She looked around, but there was no getting away from it; the rooftop was completely deserted. Through a skylight near her feet, she could glance down and see flames still flickering on the power-station floor.

"So, where are these 'brothers' of yours?" Her hands were planted on her hips.

Kreed had produced a number of frag mines from a compartment built into his thigh, and was currently in the process of laying them on the stairs and in the doorway, covering that approach route. "Hard as it may be to believe, after all that crap down below, we're still a couple of minutes ahead schedule." She heard him grunt softly. "Sometimes I guess it pays to be fashionably late."

"Just who are they anyway? The brothers, I mean."

Another grunt. "They call themselves the Quiet Brethren. Least, that's the nearest that it translates into Basic. I think it loses at least a couple of levels of meaning." A pause as he finished setting the last of the mines and stood up. "They're kind of . . . warrior monks I suppose. Got themselves exiled from their home world for some reason they're none too keen on discussing. I don't know what kind of hold Rath has on them, but they've proved damned useful over the years. Really give us an edge, y'know?"

She was going to say something – that he still hadn't really said who the brothers were. But she'd spotted something – a small ship, the size of a patrol boat, approaching their position steadily. "Well, looks like they're here."

His gaze followed her hand to the spot where she was pointing. "That's not them . . ." he began.

Mission was already running when it opened fire. She caught a glimpse of Kreed desperately activating his shields, then threw herself headlong as laser fire strafed across the rooftop.

A short time later, there was an explosion. The laser fire ceased abruptly.

She looked up.

Kreed was lying sprawled on his back, unmoving. Wisps of smoke curled up from his prone body and his shields had been shredded. The only sign of the ship was a thick black trail of smoke descending into the deep canyon between Nar Shaddaa's buildings. Just for a second or so, Mission wondered incredulously as to whether Kreed had managed to shoot it down.

Then she heard the _other_ spaceship approaching from the opposite direction. She stared at it: sleek, black and deadly – just about small enough to fit inside the _Shadow Dancer_. She came to the abrupt decision that she didn't want to still be there when it landed.

Moving as quickly as she could, Mission picked her way down the mined staircase, back towards the burning turbine hall. None of Seboba's men had tried coming up that way, so she allowed herself to hope they'd given up on that route. Just as she reached the door though, there was another explosion from below.

The entire building shook. She heard the wailing of stressed metal, and a moment later, on the other side of the door, the catwalk broke free of its moorings and dropped into the flames below.

For several seconds she struggled to stop herself breaking down and either weeping or beating her fists against the door. With a deep breath, she turned reluctantly back up the stairs towards the roof.

The spaceship had landed, its boarding ramp lowered. She saw Kreed gingerly lifting himself back to his feet, and numbly wondered what the hell it actually took to put him down permanently.

Something was descending the spaceship's boarding ramp. It took several seconds to make her eyes focus on it. It moved towards Kreed, a fleeting, flitting shadow.

It spoke: "Rath is back from his meeting. He wants to know, and I quote: 'What, in the name of the Force, do you think you're playing at?'"

Kreed just laughed, though the laughter broke down quickly into ragged, hacking coughing. Mission realised then that she probably _had_ seen the brothers before. She just hadn't realised it.

The brothers were Defels.

Kreed was looking at her, bloodied and blackened. She aimed her blasters at him, and he spat, his teeth stained red. "Well blue? What's it going to be?"

-s-s-

A dark hand clawed at her, grasping, trying to drag her back down into the clinging mire of darkness. She fought back, kicking out and thrashing, but the grip just tightened on her remorselessly.

_No. No fear. No anger. Just calm. Just serenity_. She wasn't sure if the voice was her own – a deeply hidden part of her that still remained untainted – or someone else's, but it made sense. She let go – stopped struggling – and the fear slid away.

The dark hand lost its grip, unable to find purchase. Something distant roared in rage and frustration. Bastila woke up, gasping.

The sudden brightness made her flinch. Someone was standing over her, but it was too painful to focus on. Too bright. Her face screwed up, twisting to one side.

As she blinked rapidly, her eyes gradually adjusted. Her surrounding resolved back into focus. The figure standing over her was a medical droid, elegantly slender and gleaming. She was in the _Starlight Phoenix's_ medical bay.

"Where's . . ." _Tamar? No. No._ Anger and confusion surfaced briefly. _He's not here. I don't want him here. Not after . . .._ She struggled to remember where she was. "Canderous . . . Captain Organa . . . Zikl."

"Please lie back, Jedi Bastila." The medical droid's voice was soothing and serene. It leant closer to her, holding a hypospray. "Try to relax. You've been unconscious for several days, and you're still very weak. You need to rest."

"Wait. Wait." Her eyes flickered and darted about wildly. "It's important. It . . . you need to tell them. I . . . I know what _he's_ looking for. _I saw_."

Unconsciousness reclaimed her.

-s-s-

The _Ajunta's Blade_ sat on its own in the middle of one of the _Long and Winding Way's_ fighter bays. No one was near it, and the surrounding bay was completely still, illuminated solely by the dim glow of pilot lights.

There was a subtle vibration as the _Long and Winding Way_ exited hyperspace. Something built intrinsically into the _Ajunta's Blade's _control systems reacted to the change and came spontaneously to life. It took a second or so for it to calculate its position.

Then it sent out a very brief encrypted tightbeam burst, back to its point of origin, before switching off again.


	6. Smoke and Mirrors

**6. Smoke and Mirrors**

Bastila paused, leaning briefly against a half-rotten tree-trunk that was thick with moss and pale, bulbous fungi. She struggled to catch her breath, but the air – thick with mist that reduced visibility down to the tens of yards – was like inhaling warm liquid. Sweat rolled down the side of her face and plastered her dark hair lankly to her forehead.

She'd forgone her normal Jedi robes. Wading through knee-deep mud and brackish swamp water in such stultifying heat while weighed down by _them_ hardly bore thinking about. Instead, she was dressed in standard issue Republic fatigue trousers and a plain tank-top that had started out as white. The jacket to go with the trousers was currently tied round her waist. Her bare arms, strong and sinewy, glistened beneath a layer of unpleasant smelling insect repellent.

Wiping a hand across her brow merely served to redistribute the sweat.

Dromund Kaas, the planet was called, and it was like a swampy vision of hell.

The Rapid-class corvette, _Knight Errant_ stood in high orbit, ready to whisk them away if necessary. The _Starlight Phoenix_ and the rest of the taskforce, on the other hand, were nearly a third of the outer-rim away.

This expedition had been the cause of long and bitter arguments, particularly with Captain Organa. With Zikl still deep in some sort of coma, he'd been extremely vociferous in his objections to losing the taskforce's one remaining Jedi, even for a short period. His reminders of her responsibilities as the taskforce's _de facto_ commanding officer, had been particularly strident.

In the end though, she'd insisted, and had gotten her way – although, given the extreme physical discomfort, she was now regretting that just a fraction.

It _had_ been absolutely necessary though. She told herself that again firmly, fighting down the doubts that had started to surface once the initial edge of urgency from her vision faded.

In the brief moment when she'd thrust the spear of Force, combined out of herself and Zikl's strength, into the face of the dark-crowned Sith, the shadows surrounding him had been thrown back. It had taken her unconscious thoughts time to process what she'd seen in that brief instant, but the conclusion she'd reached was undeniable.

He – and it was a he – was seeking to follow in Revan's footsteps.

He wanted to retrace the path that Revan and Malak had first taken at the end of the Mandalorian wars, deep into the unknown regions along with a third of the Republic Fleet. What he hoped to find there was very much open to question – there could hardly be another Star Forge waiting to be discovered – but it was what he was doing nonetheless.

She hadn't been able to determine the next stepping-stone on that path. The one that had, for some reason, caused him to attack Hoth and Manarb. But she had been able to see the previous one. And that was here. Dromund Kaas.

"Got to hand it you, Bastila. You sure know how to pick the choice vacation spots."

She looked round at Canderous sourly, but didn't say anything.

Like her with her robes, he wasn't wearing his normal heavy armour. His black top had glued itself to the sculpted contours of his massive chest and his steel-grey hair stood up in sweaty spikes. Despite those details, he still managed to seem as impervious to the conditions as a granite statue.

"You okay?" he asked quietly, so no one else could hear.

"Fine."

"Only, you look like you should have spent an extra few days in sick bay."

Not, in all honesty, an inaccurate assessment, although the only person she was going to admit that to was herself. "Look, I'm coping. You don't have to worry about me."

He shrugged, as if to say, _who's worried_.

The others caught up. The pair of Republic science personnel assigned to the expedition appeared to be suffering every bit as much as she was from the conditions. Lieutenant Jansa – a short, mousy blonde human woman and specialist in alien archaeology – was flushed and puffing hard as she struggled to wade through water that came almost to mid-thigh on her. And while Bastila was less well versed on Ithorian physiology, she could sense Velta Laska's discomfort clearly through the Force. Velta Laska was an expert in xenobiology, and theoretically their guide – though since he knew as much about Dromund Kaas as the rest of them, theory was all it was. Bringing up the rear, the three Republic commandos rounding out their number were as apparently untroubled as Canderous.

Of course, it wasn't just the physical conditions that were affecting her. It was the pervasive darkside taint too – a constant, nagging, sapping miasma.

Bastila had only ever encountered an instance once before where an entire planet had felt part of the darkside, and that had been Korriban. Standing on the _Knight Errant's_ bridge, looking down at the dingy cloud-wreathed sphere of Dromund Kaas, she'd realised with something close to dread, that she'd now encountered a second one.

Not that, in any other respect, Dromund Kaas much resembled Korriban.

For starters, it was well outside the formal borders of Sith space, and that had been the case even in the heydays of the likes of Marka Ragnos and Naga Sadow. Odd then, the number of Sith temples that dotted the planet's oozing, swampy surface. It wasn't even that Dromund Kaas was somewhere you could easily stumble upon by accident. Spatial anomalies, similar to those making up the Rishi Maze, surrounded the star system, interfering with hyperdrives and making even getting there deliberately something of a nightmare.

Something must have drawn the Sith here, but she couldn't for the life of her see the attraction. Or perhaps the planet's isolated nature was, in itself, the attraction.

The number of temples had presented something of a problem. Her fleeting contact with the Sith Lord's mind hadn't exactly given precise directions for them to follow, and scouring all of the sites manually would take months. Their initial scans of the surface hadn't helped much either. There was nothing to indicate any energy sources or population centres, and there were certainly no obvious indicators of the presence of any kind of Sith garrison.

Only more detailed and concentrated sensor sweeps had eventually shown up the strange phased-energy field that was almost invisible to a more cursory glance. It covered an area of swampland about nine miles square just south of Dromund Kaas's equator. None of their efforts had managed to penetrate it, or even reveal anything significant about its nature, but it was the only thing of significance they had picked up.

Because of the terrain, the drop-ship had been forced to put them down getting on for twenty miles away from the perimeter of the energy field. While that had suited them in some respects, reducing the chance of anyone who happened to be inside the field receiving advance warning of their approach, it had also made for a very arduous trek.

"Careful. Another of the dart vine clusters. Ten metres ahead on the left," Velta Laska informed them in gurgling but comprehensible Basic.

The twin mouths of an Ithorian, arranged either side of its hammerhead-like skull, meant that Basic was a difficult language for them to master – to the extent that the majority didn't bother with more than learning how to understand it. Velta Laska though, was fluent enough, and apparently extremely proud of linguistic abilities.

They'd seen what dart vines were capable of shortly after setting down. An amphibious creature bearing a faint resemblance to a gizka had hopped too close to a batch, triggering the violent release of a cloud of spores shaped like miniature arrowheads. The spores were obviously highly poisonous, because the gizka-alike had collapsed within seconds of being struck, completely paralysed. Since then they'd all steered well clear.

Ahead, the swamp waters started to get deeper, and forward progress became even slower.

At this rate, they were going to struggle to make the perimeter of the energy field by nightfall, and the prospect of camping out did not exactly fill Bastila's heart with joy. Her head was throbbing; the insufferable heat and humidity; the background buzzing of insects; most of all, the pervasive, ever-present darkside taint.

Suddenly Canderous stumbled, going in up to his armpits. He managed to catch himself, but indicated they should stop with a raised hand. "Ground drops away right here." His eyes surveyed the stretch of murky water in front of them. "Unless there's some way of skirting it, we're gonna need to do some swimming."

Bubbles broke the surface of the pool. There was the fleeting impression of something very big moving just beneath the surface, silt stirring from the bottom in thick clouds.

Everyone fell instantly and utterly silent, staring at that one spot.

Bastila slid the hilt of her duel-bladed lightsaber from her belt. She saw Canderous hefting his heavy repeater, training it on the water in front of him. His expression looked wary; grimly set.

A few moments later, something rose up, slowly and serenely, from the water about four metres in front of them. It was an eyestalk, bearing an eye that was bigger than Bastila's fist, but otherwise disturbingly human looking. Her jaw clenched and she gripped her lightsaber all the tighter.

"A dianoga," Velta Laska stated, breaking the apprehensive silence and sudden, total stillness. "Fascinating. A big one too. They're not native to this . . ."

Before the Ithorian could finish, Canderous made a startled exclamation. There was a tremendous splash and he disappeared from view, dragged beneath the surface.

-s-s-

"So, what you're saying is, we've blown it. All that effort for no return." Shakrill made a noise akin to a hiss and bared sharp canines. The scar down the side of the big Trandoshan's face still hadn't entirely faded.

"No." Ravelasch, spokesperson of the brothers, sounded impatient, which was distinctly unusual. Emotion rarely crept into the Defel's conversation. "I imply nothing of the sort."

Rath folded his hands beneath his chin and let out a very audible sigh. "Gentlemen, please."

Silence descended abruptly. All eyes swivelled round to face him at the head of the table. Through the main window of this conference room on board the _Shadow Dancer,_ the only thing visible was the endless blankness of hyperspace.

When he was sure he had everyone's full attention, he spoke again. "The information I've received indicates that the bounty is still very much on the table. And there has been no whisper to indicate that he's been captured. Given the current political situation, they would want to announce that news at the very earliest moment they were able to."

"Perhaps they are simply waiting for confirmation." That was Theda, a tall, dark-haired Zeltron woman with a voice like poured silk.

"They've had ample opportunity to make such a confirmation by now." Rath shook his head in disagreement. "No, it is too easy to sit back and regard the Republic as a single entity with one unified will. The reality is, it's a nest of a thousand different factions that the Galactic Senate occasionally manages – as much through luck as judgement – to get facing in the same direction. I think we'll find that the _Winding Way_ is made up of personnel who fought alongside Revan at the Star Forge, and bear him some residual loyalty from then – despite the current allegations against him."

"Maybe so Rath," Theda persisted. "But it still presents us with a significant problem. The Republic is unlikely to look too kindly on us hitting a Republic ship, killing Republic military personnel, and then trying to claim a bounty from them. Even if the _Winding Way _has gone rogue. It sets what they'd probably regard as a dangerous precedent."

"Do you think?" Rath's tone was dryly laconic.

"Stop being so damned smug, and tell us what your plan is," Shakrill all but growled. "And if I hear the word 'patience', I'm going to rips your intestines out and play a game of cat's cradle with them."

"Tsk, so aggressive, Shak." Rath unfolded his arms, leant forwards and pushed a sequence of keys that caused a display screen to pop-up from the tabletop. After a moment spent flicking through menus, he turned the screen round so the others could see. "On the last update we received from the estimable brothers' source." Rath made a respectful nod towards Ravelasch. "The _Winding Way_ was passing through Nam Chorios in the Meridian Sector. Rather a long way out from the core worlds, and surprisingly close to the boundaries of Sith space. It also happens to be right at the heart of the territory Daggart Fett runs."

"Why don't I like where this is going?" Kreed's muttered response was clearly audible to everyone in the room.

"Because you're turning into an old woman?" Shak suggested.

"Ha, bloody, ha."

"Anyway," Rath continued swiftly. "If Mr. Fett and his fellow pirates were to somehow acquire the knowledge that Revan was in such close proximity . . .. Well, I think they'd have far less qualms than us about attacking a Republic capital ship."

Kreed made an impolite noise. "Fett's a paranoid bugger. He's not gonna just leap into action at your say so."

"Give me a little credit, please. I've already sent an encrypted signal, ostensibly to a contact on Nam Chorios. I know for a fact that Daggart more or less owns one of the relay stations the message passes through, and he slices everything. He'll bite. He's too greedy not to."

"Daggart is Cassus's bastard, right?" Theda was looking at Kreed as she spoke. "That makes him a fellow Mandalorian."

Kreed's expression twisted sourly. "It takes more than the blood in your veins to be a Mandalorian. 'Sides, from their respective ages, Cassus would have been fourteen when he spawned Daggart. Not impossible, I suppose, but nah." A headshake. "Far more likely Daggart's just some scumbag trying to play off the name and sound like a toughass."

Rath drummed his fingers on the tabletop sharply, snapping attention back to him. "Whatever the truth of Daggart's ancestry, the fact remains he possesses two fully armed Mandalorian destroyers and a working interdictor, on top of a whole host of fighters and gunships. Enough to comprehensively overpower a lone Republic frigate, even if most of his ships are at least five years out of date and in sore need of spare parts."

"So Daggart does the dirty work and we nip in and snatch his prize? That about the size of it?" Kreed's tone of voice was completely neutral – usually not a good sign.

"Simplified to hell, but it'll do as an overview." Rath shrugged.

"This doesn't sound like crap to anyone else sitting here?" Kreed asked.

Rath winced in mock hurt. "Please Kreed, a little faith. Is that really so much to ask after all these years? When have I ever steered you wrong?"

"He does have a point though, Rath." There was palpable surprise around the table as Theda spoke up – especially from Kreed. Theda always backed Rath up, no matter what.

Rath turned his gaze to her. "Theda?"

"The amount of variables here; the amount of things that could go wrong . . .."

He held up a hand to stop her. "I'll admit we don't have a great deal of control over events, and that's not the way we like to work. But think about it. What is the worst possible outcome for us?"

Theda pursed her ever so perfect lips, but in the end said nothing.

"If our luck is entirely out, Daggart will blow it and the _Winding Way_ will escape unscathed. Our means of tracking them is still in place, and we just have to try something else. We've lost nothing. Revan has got to know already that just about everyone else in the galaxy is after his balls on a silver platter, so we're hardly tipping our hand." He glanced to Kreed, who was glowering – although glowering was pretty much the Mandalorian's natural expression – then back to Theda. "Far more likely, the _Winding Way_ will, at the least, be badly enough damaged in the attack that it has to put into port somewhere. There's even a pretty good chance of Daggart succeeding."

"And if he botches it the other way? Destroys the _Winding Way_ entirely, and Revan with it?"

"Then so be it." Rath's face – and voice – hardened abruptly. "I know someone who's willing to cover our expenses and then some, as long as we can bring proof of his demise. I have that proof, should it occur. It isn't quite the same as the deal for delivering him alive, but I'm sure we'll overcome our respective disappointments in that event."

Eventually Theda gave a nod. Kreed said nothing.

"As far as I can see it, this is a play with no possible negative outcome. How many times, exactly, have any of us been able to say that?" He looked around the table to each face in turn. "So, unless there are any more questions? No? In that case I think we've all got plenty of work that needs doing."

Kreed lingered behind after all the others had gone. "Can I have a word, Rath? A private one, I mean?"

Rath gave the Mandalorian a long, measuring look before he finally nodded.

-s-s-

Bastila's lightsaber ignited with a sharp _snap-hiss_, twin blades shining yellow in the mist. Instinctively she slashed down blind into the murky water near her ankles, making the water bubble and steam. A moment later, she sensed a sharp flash of animalistic pain, and something as thick as a tree root withdrew from her rapidly.

The spot where Canderous had disappeared from view churned into froth.

There was a sharp retort and a bright flash, lighting up the swamp water – Canderous, firing his heavy repeater. Whether he actually hit anything or not was impossible to tell. Briefly, his head broke the surface, gasping for breath, before he was dragged back under again.

One the commandos – Tasker possibly – fired blind into the swamp, uncomfortably close to where Canderous had just been. Bastila snapped at him to hold fire, struggling in an effort to use the Force to discern what was going on through the churning morass.

Distracted, she was caught unawares as another tentacle snaked round her legs, jerking her off her feet. She managed one last gulp of air before her head went under.

For several seconds it was too disorientating to tell which direction was up or down in the cloudy gloom. She flailed around with her lightsaber, the blade creating weird patterns of shadow and illumination, but failed to connect with anything solid. The grip around her ankle was crushing, and she felt herself being remorselessly reeled in.

She caught a brief glimpse of Canderous as she was dragged past him. A pair of tentacles thicker than her ankle had wrapped around his legs, but he'd managed to hook an arm around the roots of one of the trees and was holding on for grim death – or at least until he ran out of oxygen. She saw that he was trying to grope for something at his waist, but didn't have time to see what . . .

Then she saw the dianoga's spherical central body, looming in front of her. It was at least two metres across, and from the look of it, half of that was mouth. The mouth opened, wide enough to swallow her whole. It was lined with rows of teeth to make a firaxa shark jealous.

She started to thrash franticly, lungs burning. Dimly she was aware of blaster bolts passing through the water around her and making it bubble and boil. The leathery hide of the dianoga's central body seemed to absorb the impacts with little ill effect though.

In desperation, she slashed down around her ankles with her lightsaber. The dianoga's maw was no more than a metre away . . .

One of the lightsaber blades bit into something solid. There was a sizzling sound. Bastila could feel her lungs burning and her vision swam with patterns of red and black.

Suddenly the grip on her slackened. Pain flared in her calf and she realised belatedly that she'd sliced all the way through the dianoga's tentacle and was now cutting into her own boot. She kicked hard as the dianoga's jaws snapped shut on empty water and broke the surface, gasping.

She had the brief impression of Canderous losing his grip on the tree root. She made a desperate attempt to grab him using the Force.

She missed. Dull horror filled her . . .

There was a muffled roaring sound. Chunks of flesh and pale, glutinous ichors went flying, colouring the water in thick clouds. A moment later the dianoga breached the surface, lolling, somewhat resembling a half-deflated balloon, a massive crater blown in one side of it. The few tentacles still attached to it floated limply.

It was several more seconds before Canderous resurfaced, his face purple as he gasped for air. The relief Bastila felt was stunning. Her lightsaber shut off with a snap.

Abruptly all his strength seemed to drain away, and he started to slide beneath the surface again.

"No, you don't." Bastila grunted with effort as she caught him beneath the armpits. Even with the water to help support him he was extremely heavy and near impossible to move. She saw his eyes rolling, unfocussed in a shell-shocked daze.

Then two of the commandos were alongside her, helping her drag him back to the shallows.

He stumbled, legs buckling as there was suddenly solid ground beneath his feat. Suddenly almost all of his two-hundred and fifty odd pounds weight was leaning down on her, and her own injured leg went, dropping her to her knees in the mire. Canderous managed to catch himself against a tree trunk, and doubled over, panting and coughing up filthy water. His broad back shook, wracked by intermittent tremors.

"Are you hurt?" She knew it was a stupid question even as she asked him. Of course he was bloody hurt.

He looked up at her, still panting, apparently not having heard a single word. "Frag grenade," he commented after a few seconds, voice weirdly loud, a savage grin slanting across his lips. "Gave the bastard indigestion."

-s-s-

"So, how's our guest getting on?" Rath asked quietly.

Kreed snorted as he sat down again. "How d'you think, Rath? How d'you bloody think?"

"Still angry then? Still demonstrating that charmingly creative use of language."

Kreed didn't look amused by his flippant tone. "Oh, she's still angry alright. Although angry doesn't really even begin to cover it. But she's not singing any more. Doubt she's said more than four words since Nar Shaddaa. And in case you're wondering: no, I don't regard that as a good sign."

"Oh?" Rath raised an eyebrow, his voice – on the surface – light enough.

"She's plotting our deaths. She witnessed us killing two of her friends, and she's planning on returning the favour, big time. First chance she gets. I think if it comes to a choice between escaping and watching us die she's gonna take the latter option, even if it costs her own life in the process."

"You almost sound like you're scared, Kreed. Of a fifteen year old girl."

Another snort. "And you sound like Shak. That's the type of cheap and clumsy jibe I'd expect from him. And it cuts about as deep."

"I never anticipated she was going to grateful over being kidnapped," Rath observed mildly.

"She's a complication, Rath. A wildcard. You think she's going to make it easier for us to capture and control Revan? Newsflash: I don't. In fact I'm wondering if she'll turn into that fatal uncontrollable variable that ends up blowing the whole deal for us."

Rath favoured Kreed with a long and steady look. "Are you volunteering to kill her for me then?"

"What?" The Mandalorian sounded startled.

"Oh, stop playing dense. We can't let her go, can we? Either we keep her alive as prisoner and hostage, or, if that's too difficult, we have to dispose of her. Is it your recommendation that we dispose her?"

Kreed's teeth gritted tight and he stared hard at Rath. His artificial eye seemed, inexplicably to glow brighter. Rath simply met his gaze in his usual calm, unruffled manner. Eventually Kreed's face twisted in what was very nearly a snarl. "No, that is not my recommendation."

"Funny. I thought it was usually the hostage who ended up developing an attachment to her captors. Not the other way around."

Kreed just glowered.

"So, what did you want to talk to me about? Assuming we haven't already covered it?"

The Mandalorian leant back in his seat and let out a long, calming breath. Briefly, he tilted his head back, gazing up at the ceiling, before meeting Rath's gaze again. "Why are we doing this, Rath? I mean, really."

Rath blinked in manufactured surprise. "Excuse me? This?"

Kreed wasn't fooled for so much as a microsecond. "Don't play dumb Rath. I'm not in the mood for it."

Rath's lips twisted wryly. "I'm guessing you mean the Revan thing."

"Yeah, the Revan thing. And don't give any of that sithspit about it being about the money."

"Well it is a lot of money, Kreed. More money than any of us is likely to see otherwise in a lifetime."

"But this isn't how we do things!" Kreed suddenly seemed genuinely angry, all the calm boiled away in a flash. "What was it you always said about the big, speculative jobs? About them beings fools' errands for those who are tired of life? That you'd never met anyone who'd ever successfully pulled the big, one-off set-yourself-for-life venture with both life and freedom still intact at the end of it. Know your weaknesses as well as your strengths. Don't overstretch your reach. Is any of this ringing _any_ kind of bell?"

"You were the one eager to test yourself against Revan," Rath pointed out.

"As if listening to the wish-fulfilment fantasies of a half-mechanical Mandalorian merc with a death-wish is _ever_ a good way of running things."

Rath threw back his head and laughed. After a moment or two, reluctantly, Kreed joined in, and some of the tension drained away.

Eventually Rath said, "It isn't as speculative as you think, my friend. You're doing what everyone in the galaxy seems to be doing right now – letting yourself get suckered in by the mystique surrounding Revan's name. He's just a man though. A powerful, dangerous man, but in no way immortal or superhuman. We possess all the necessary components to take him." He spread his hands.

"Look at how Taris went. The only thing that Jedi Juhani lacked over Revan is the power of the name. By all accounts she was one of the most able Force users, Jedi or Sith, in the galaxy, battle-hardened and as tough as they come. Yet we took her down without any excessive risk or difficulty. I don't expect Revan to be easy, Kreed, but we've done as hard as this before without an eyebrow raised by any of us. Don't fall so in love with the legends that you start believing in them."

Finally Kreed grunted. "Maybe you're right, Rath."

"Then you're still with me? You're happy?"

Kreed looked at him, long and hard. "No, I'm not happy. Your rationalisations sound convincing enough. They sound like the rationalisations you'd make. But in the end, that's all they are – rationalisations. You're holding something back from us, and I won't have it. This is personal to you somehow."

Rath's quiet chuckle was not convincing. "You think I'm looking for some kind of revenge? Is that it?"

"I don't know. Are you?"

Rath let out an exasperated breath. "You know, Kreed, this is starting to annoy me just a little. Haven't I earned a little leeway; a little in the way of trust."

"Just answer the damned question!"

"Fine. I have no reason to want revenge on Revan. He didn't kill, or otherwise harm, any of my family. He never harmed my homeworld. And I've never even come close to meeting him that I know of. In fact, if we want to be entirely open about everything, I have more reasons to be grateful to him than to hate him."

"Oh?" There was definite scepticism in Kreed's voice.

"I came from Ventara originally. Did you know that? Not the most picturesque of worlds, and I was only too glad to get away from there at the earliest opportunity. But I still bear it a passing fondness. Pah, you've never even heard of Ventara have you? No real reason you should have. Anyway, back near the beginning of the Mandalorian wars, Ventara happened to fall in the path of one the three main Mandalorian invasion fleets. We didn't have much in the way of defences, but you know as well as I do that that wouldn't have saved us. To cut a boring story short, right before the Mandalorians reached us, Revan and Malak joined the war against the wishes of the Jedi Council. The Mandalorians turned aside from their path to meet one of Revan's counter attacks, and Ventara was spared. Probably inadvertent on his part, but there you go."

"So Revan saved your life." It was almost a sneer, filled with open disbelief.

"Oh, don't be unnecessarily thick, please. Of course he didn't save my life. I hadn't been anywhere near Ventara in over a decade. At best, he saved the life of an uncle and a couple of aunts – maybe a cousin or two that I've never even met. Even so, notional as any gratitude of mine is, I have no particular reason to despise the man."

Kreed still didn't look particularly convinced.

"Look, what's it going to take? Blood?" Rath pushed back from chair, stood up, and stalked across to the viewport – where there was currently precisely nothing to see.

"Just a bit of openness and honesty. The real reasons we're all risking our lives. Who you were meeting on Nar Shaddaa, for instance."

"Ah, that's the real reason you're so riled, isn't it? Nar Shaddaa and our brush with dearest Seboba. Perhaps not my finest hour, I'll admit."

"That's putting it mildly," Kreed muttered.

Rath looked back from the viewport. "I was meeting with an old . . ." A rather telling pause as he groped for the correct word. "Friend. One I hadn't seen for years. Pertinent information was exchanged, and quite frankly, that's all you need to know."

"That's not good enough."

Rath turned all the way back, and this time the anger was obvious. His face was tight with it. "No? Well, tough. In case you're having memory problems, you work for me. Not the other way round. I don't think I'm too hard a boss, am I? I listen to your concerns and advice. I make sure everyone's taken care of and gets their proper share. I don't gamble with your lives. But when it comes to it, I _am_ still the boss. And you do what I pay you to do."

Finally, Kreed nodded. "Just don't start breaking your own rules Rath. That's all I ask." He turned and walked out of there.

-s-s-

Nighttime on Dromund Kaas was not a pleasant experience.

Because of their proximity to the equator, dusk was short and the darkness closed in fast. They'd barely had time to find a patch of ground that rose above the surrounding swamp's water level, and with the combination of the ever-present mist and the thick canopy of vegetation, the blackness was near total. Without resorting to the Force – which given the proximity of the darkside she was loath to do – Bastila found herself unable to see her own hand more than a foot in front of her face.

The heat and humidity had lessened only slightly from the day, and if anything, the swarms of insects grew even thicker, forming an incessant background hum to go with the constant dripping and sloshing. Bastila managed only fitful snatches of sleep, and even that was plagued by a variety of bad dreams she could only half-remember.

When it came time for her to take the third watch, she was more-or-less exhausted, her clothing still feeling clammy, sodden, and uncomfortable around her.

She sat with her lightsaber resting across her lap, staring out in the direction that she knew the water to be, listening to the occasional splashes. The darkside energy and twisted life of the place was even more profoundly apparent now she didn't have much in the way of vision to distract her other senses. Her thoughts traced relentlessly through old and uncomfortably twisted paths.

An hour into her watch something large floated past a few yards in front of her. Velta Laska had assured them that there would me no more dianogas in the immediate vicinity, and that one the size they'd encountered would have swept a good four miles square of swamp clean of any other sizable lifeforms. He also gone on to explain, in rather more detail than anyone else was interested in, how the species were propagated through the galaxy in near-microscopic, larval form, carried in the waste systems of starships.

A log, she finally determined, allowing herself to relax again.

By the time Canderous tapped her on the shoulder, she was almost dozing. It was a struggle to keep herself from jolting in surprise, and inwardly she cursed herself for letting her guard drop so far. A proper Jedi would have sensed his approach.

"Time for bed, Princess." His voice was a rough-textured whisper.

"You shouldn't be taking a watch," she whispered back, unfolding herself and standing up. A low-hanging tree branch caught and snarled in her hair.

He grunted quietly. "I've stood watches in far worse condition than this."

"But I'm betting that was before you were old enough to be someone's granddad."

As she started to head back towards her bedroll, she heard him mutter: "Least I don't spend my time talking to myself."

She stopped and turned around slowly. "What did you just say?"

There was a slight delay before he responded. "Just noting your rather . . . verbal sleeping habits."

"I most certainly do not talk in my sleep." Bastila felt heat flaring to her cheeks. _Oh, please, say that I don't_.

"Of course not." The sarcasm dripped. "But, whatever you were doing, you were definitely keeping the rest of us entertained. I think we're all particularly curious about the identity of the 'Twi'lek slattern'."

The heat in her cheeks became even worse, and she was suddenly very grateful to the darkness. She knew she was flushing bright red. "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about." Whispered, it came out almost as a hiss. She started to turn away again.

"So that's it."

She knew the words were deliberately calculated to infuriate her. She knew that the best thing to do was ignore him completely. She answered anyway. "So what's it?"

"Your link with Tamar." His tone was so nonchalantly certain that she wanted to scream. "He's found a new _special_ friend I take it. Don't know why you're upset though. I mean yeah, no doubt it's a little uncomfortable, but I was under the impression you were the one who threw him out."

Bastila's mouth worked silently. She clamped her jaw tightly shut.

"Still, can't fault his taste. His sanity maybe . . ."

"You _know_ who she is?" The volume and shrillness of her voice made her want to curl up into a ball and die of shame.

"Oh, come on. You've seen the same newscasts I have. Twi'lek. It's not like I'm . . ."

Before he could finish speaking, a low howl rang out from somewhere disturbingly close by. It trailed off into a cackling bark.

Water dripped.

"You can put your lightsaber on. It's hardly going to be able to see any worse than us, whatever it is," Canderous stated softly after long, tense seconds of absolute silence.

Bastila nodded, before realising he couldn't see her. The sudden, harsh yellow glare made her blink rapidly, eyes watering. It only illuminated a relatively small circle of ground, and the darkness beyond that grew all the deeper.

"What the hell was that?" One of the commandos – Corporal Tasker – had crossed over from the other side of the camp. He gripped his blaster carbine tightly at the ready.

"Local wildlife." Canderous shook his head and turned away. "Big enough by the sound of it, but shouldn't be a threat if we . . ."

The rest of his words faded into the background. Bastila was reaching out into the darkness with probing tendrils of Force, striving to see where her gaze could not penetrate. The sense of fecund life all around her was nearly overpowering – multitudes of it, thronging on every side. There was a kind of sick taint to it all though, where the darkness had taken root in the swamp itself, twisting and warping it over the years and centuries until it was now utterly corrupted.

Then her mind brushed against something that was looking back at her.

Its reaction was instantaneous. She knew immediately that it could feel the contact, and sense her through it. And she felt its fury.

It made her flinch away and draw back rapidly, the reek of madness clinging like the swamp mud.

Something moved in the undergrowth. It didn't howl this time, only the rustling and shifting of undergrowth marking its passage as it shot like an arrow, straight towards her. Canderous and Tasker opened fire together, blasters singing together in symphony.

Both missed.

Bastila received the fleeting impression of a dense, fast moving shadow leaping straight towards her and tried to twist away, bringing her lightsaber across her body in a flashing arc. Something impacted with her shoulder, sending her staggering as it flew past her. One of her lightsaber blades bit into something solid, severing it . . .. There was a cackling hiss of pain.

She found herself facing a creature that resembled a big, heavy-set and extremely bad tempered wolf. It growled, deep inside its chest. Its whip-like tail traced the air, back and forth, foreshortened and leaking blood. Something about the creature told her instinctively that it was being driven by far more than natural animal instinct and hunger. It pounced again.

Her lightsaber swung across to intercept, but it almost seemed like it could read her movements through the Force. Instead of neatly taking the creature's head off, she scored a glancing blow across its shoulder. Fur and flesh sizzled.

Then it barrelled straight through her legs, sending her flying. She rolled on impact with the ground, trying to come straight up to her feet. Her wrist jarred on a tree root, and her lightsaber bounced free of her grasp.

Its paws scrabbled, churning the mud beneath it as it turned back almost double on itself. Ropes of hot saliva fell from the corners of its mouth. Canderous opened up with his repeater, hitting it in the side with at least one shot, but the sheer density of the thing's muscle tissue seeming to absorb the impact with only minor ill effect. Snarling, it launched itself straight at Bastila's throat.

She called on the Force, operating on pure desperation and instinct.

Force lightning shot from her fingertips, striking the creature directly in its slavering jaws and frying it from the inside out.

As its charred, still smoking carcass hit the ground, she simply stared down at it, numb with shock.

-s-s-

Outside the apartment's window, the new Coruscant day was dawning spectacularly. The floor-length window was several hundred feet above cloud level, the rising sun reflecting off the tops of those clouds in a truly dazzling display. The upper reaches of other skyscrapers, rising above the clouds, resembled glowing silver needles.

The towering bulk of the senate complex dominated the skyline in the near distance.

"Are you paying attention, my apprentice? You appear somewhat . . . distracted."

Morrigance carefully held back her annoyance. "Of course, my Lord Auza. You were telling me about the visit you received from Yuthura Ban." She swept an exaggerated bow to the holographic image of the grotesque Sith Lord.

"I was under the impression that I asked you deal with Revan," Auza's voice gurgled, edged by a menace that he normally concealed behind disingenuous affability. So he was angry with her. Quite honestly though, she couldn't care less. "Yet despite your supposed efforts, he still showed up with Ban, in the middle of my palace, and dared to threaten me."

"It seems I must offer my profound congratulations, my lord." Morrigance inclined her head, her voice completely emotionless.

"You offer . . . your what?" Auza sounded incredulous.

"My apologies, master." She struggled to keep her contempt in check. "I just assumed that, since we were having this conversation, yourself and Celyanda must have defeated Revan and Ban. Have I misunderstood? Is that not the case?"

Across the holo-link, she could almost feel him seething. "I was forced to evacuate from my own home! I was stolen from and humiliated. That will not stand, apprentice. That will not stand. Do you understand me?"

She looked at him. _Oh, I understand just fine. At the first sign of danger you ran off like a simpering virgin whose date has gotten a little too free with his hands. If you'd stayed to support Celyanda, Revan and Ban would be dead. But you didn't live this long by being anything other than a coward, did you my 'lord'. _

"Of course, my lord." Another bow.

"Ban had a number of things to say, my apprentice." Auza's tone became slightly more composed. "Some of it I found quite interesting, particularly concerning your good self."

"Oh, my lord?"

"She implied that it was Revan and herself who slew the Council; that you just opportunistically stole the credit. She also stated that Revan sought to reclaim the title of Dark Lord, rather than being the Jedi lackey that you suggested."

"And you believed her?"

"She was . . . moderately convincing." Auza favoured her with a ghastly, leering smile. "Still, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, my apprentice. On that much at least." A pause. "Now tell me, Elleste. Exactly what steps are you taking to ensure that Revan is able to be a thorn in my side no longer?"

Morrigance recognised the look in his eyes that said the question was both test and trap. Beneath her mask, she gritted her teeth. She really didn't have the patience for this anymore. "A contact of mine is tracking Revan as we speak," she said smoothly. "I am in the process of arranging a surprise for him at the earliest opportunity. Indeed, I heard from my contact only yesterday, indicating Revan was passing through the Nam . . ."

". . . Chorios system." Auza's voice was patronising. "Yes, I know. As luck would have it, an agent loyal to me intercepted a communiqué to that effect. It is good to know you are keeping at least marginally abreast of events, my apprentice. Concern yourself no further, however. I have decided to take matters personally in hand."

There was a fractional pause before she inclined her head. "Master."

"I have dispatched a portion of my fleet to intercept the vessel transporting Revan. I expect to have positive news immanently."

Morrigance found herself gritting her teeth again. "That is excellent news, Master."

"Isn't it just?" The sarcasm was thick. "I've decided I wish to see you in person, apprentice. It is so much more fulfilling to talk in person, face to face, rather than like this, don't you think? I feel I have been neglecting my role as tutor and guide of late."

"My lord, my work here on Coruscant is reaching a critical juncture . . ."

"I think I'm going to have to insist." Auza's voice turned hard and cold. "You will present yourself to me within seventy-two hours. And that, I think, concludes this conversation for now. I look forward to seeing you in person."

The hologram flickered and vanished. Morrigance drew in a sharp a breath, and for several long seconds she stood stock still, composing herself, honing her fury to tight focus. The usefulness of certain individuals, she suspected, was coming to an end.

Finally, she moved again, shrugging off her cowled black outer robe and laying it to one side. Underneath was a second robe, this one in a shade of earthen brown. She pulled the robe's hood up, over her head, then touched a control inlaid into the side of her mirror-finished mask. A holographic image flickered into existence, showing the face of a severe yet attractive looking woman aged somewhere in her fifties.

The holographic visage wasn't good enough that it would fool a person standing in the same room as her, but across a holo-link . . .

She leant forward, activating a comm. channel. A few moments later, in the same spot Darth Auza's grotesque countenance had previously occupied, the image of an Ishi Tib wearing the robes of a Jedi Padawan appeared.

Morrigance's artificial face smiled warmly in greeting. "Ah, Padawan Chafandra, such a pleasure to see you again. Could I prevail upon you to let Master Tapawan know that I wish to speak with her?"

-s-s-

Velta Laska had identified the lightning charred corpse as belonging to a vornskr.

Bastila knew about the creatures from the Jedi Archives – one of the very few known species that had evolved to be inherently Force sensitive, able to use the Force in order to track and hunt its prey. In past centuries both Jedi and Sith had made largely unsuccessful attempts to domesticate vornskr, as guard dogs and trackers. She supposed that this explained how they came to be here on Dromund Kaas. As Velta Laska had confirmed, they certainly weren't indigenous.

Her gaze flicked sidelong to Canderous, and her lips compressed into a line. She owed him an apology, she knew. She just couldn't bring herself to voice it.

It had been much easier when she'd been able to dismiss him as a brutish, antagonistic boor, useful only for hitting and shooting things. The complex, human Canderous she'd seen of late was more than she wanted to cope with right now.

Snatches of their earlier conversation played back:

_So what's the big deal? If you hadn't lost your lightsaber, you'd have cut it down with that. And you wouldn't have thought twice about it. Who cares if you fried it with lightning instead? End result's exactly the same, and I don't think the nice doggy here particularly cares much either way._ Canderous had nudged the charred carcass with his boot.

She winced to remember her retort, but the Mandalorian had shrugged it off with a shake of the head and a smirk.

_Look, I don't buy it. All you did was use the tools you had available to you. It was a matter of practicality, and you did what was necessary to survive. The alternative was a ripped out throat. Stop being so damned masochistic. Stop searching for things you can use to beat yourself over. That's the only thing stupid I can see here_.

But the Force was not simply a matter of practicality. And it certainly wasn't a tool. You never simply used the Force, because the Force had a habit of using you right back.

Instead of trying to explain, she'd shoved him away, hurling a tirade of abuse.

The shame of that burned almost as much as the Force lightning.

It wasn't even as if there hadn't been alternatives. She could have wrapped the vornskr in a stasis field, or shoved it back from her with a wave of Force. But without time to think, her instinctive reaction had been to call the lightning. Her instincts were to fall straight back down and grasp the darkside she was supposed to have abandoned. _Silly little girl, playing at being Jedi. Pretending to be what you're not_.

Something splashed nearby and her attention jerked back to her surroundings. Her heart thudded inside her chest, but there was nothing immediately to be seen.

They'd reached the perimeter of the energy field about half an hour ago. There'd been no visible indicator of it, and indeed no more sign of any Sith presence than further out in the swamp. Only sensor readings had given them any indication it was there.

As they'd paused, Bastila had reluctantly and tentatively sent her senses deeper into the swamp ahead of them in an effort to get some kind of indication of what lay ahead. The darkness had been near overwhelming, crushing down on her from every side. Part of her had begun to suspect a big part of that darkness originated from herself, amplified and reflected by her surroundings. And that was something she couldn't hope to evade.

Her mind had come into contact with that of another prowling vornskr. The reaction had been identical to the one last night: a surge of maddened, animal fury. Then it was charging directly towards her, leaping from log to log, splashing through the swamp water.

She'd been more ready for it this time, and she'd managed to call out a warning just before it burst from the surrounding undergrowth. Canderous and the three Republic commandos had all been set, guns aimed at it, ready to fire as it appeared.

And at that moment, it had become absolutely apparent what the purpose of the energy field was.

Four triggers were pulled within a fraction of a second of each other. Four guns – blaster carbines and heavy repeaters – had produced near simultaneous spluttering coughing noises and failed to fire.

Luckily, Bastila's lightsaber had still worked properly, brilliant yellow blades flaring to life. As the vornskr leapt at her she'd managed to set herself, side-step out of its path, and impale it neatly through its chest. It had been dead before it splashed back into the swamp waters and sank without a trace.

Further experimentation had simply gone to confirm the truth. They were inside some kind of suppression field. None of their firearms – whether carbines, pistols, or heavy repeaters – was capable of producing anything more dangerous than a despondent beeping noise.

The switch to melee weapons had not exactly done much to calm the growing collective sense of trepidation.

"What do you make of that?" Canderous asked Bastila quietly.

She peered through the shifting patterns of mist, at the spot he indicated, between a pair of trees that resembled gnarled and hunched old women, to a patch of raised ground.

"A statue." A robed and hooded, faceless figure, carved from stained and blotchy dark grey stone, swathed in vines and covered in patches of moss. As she looked at it, Bastila could feel its malevolence, as if the dark side had been absorbed into the stone like a particularly virulent and long lasting form of radiation.

"Really?" Canderous snorted. "Well thanks for pointing that out."

"A statue," Jansa echoed as she came alongside the two them, staring at it intently. "That's about all you can say. If it's meant to be someone specific I've no idea who. I'm obviously not that well up on my ancient Sith Lords."

A wide pool of murky swamp water separated them from the patch of ground and the statue. Very, very tentatively Bastila tried to see through the murky water via the Force, attempting to determine whether anything like the dianoga they'd encountered earlier lurked beneath the surface. She didn't detect anything, but wasn't sure whether that meant there was nothing there or she just didn't possess the talent to see.

Cautiously she started to wade round the pool's edge towards the statue. Tension drew her shoulders in tight and made her skin prickle.

"Funny. You wouldn't really expect to see a statue standing alone in the middle of a patch of swampland like this," she heard Jansa saying behind her. The water was up to her thighs now, and getting deeper by the step.

"Unless, of course, it's not." A note of excitement crept into Jansa's voice, banishing the weariness. Bastila stopped short, consciously noticing something that had been nagging at the back of her mind for at least a couple of minutes now. There were no insects in the air. For the first time since they'd landed on Dromund Kaas, there were no insects. "Look, you see that straight line there?"

"What I see is swamp." Canderous's answering tone was acerbic. "Lots and lots of fraking dismal swamp."

Bastila paused briefly, looking up at the statue's faceless cowl. She had the disturbing impression that it was somehow looking right back. No more than fifteen feet separated her from it now.

"Oh, come on. That line of trees. Right there. It's far too regular to be natural. And there. You see? A slight rise there, running at right angles. It's the foundation of some kind of old structure. It has to be."

Canderous made a noncommittal sounding grunt, which Bastila recognised as meaning he did see something, but wasn't quite prepared to admit it yet.

"I don't see a damned thing," Corporal Tasker muttered.

Jansa made an exasperated noise.

The ground beneath Bastila's feet was much firmer now, the water becoming shallower with every forward step. Then she was standing right before the statue. Trepidation filled her. There was something carved on its base, but it was obscured by clinging mud and a tangle of vines. She leant closer, frowning . . .

And suddenly her vision shifted.

She was able to see right through the statue – inside it – the surrounding swamp a thing of mist and pale ghosts and strange patches of glowing light. It was hollow, a receptacle designed to store something. And right now, it was occupied. The thing that occupied it looked down at her, sentient shadow – pure madness and malevolence – aware of her presence.

_Bastila Shan_. It spoke her name.

She gasped in shock, flinching back from it sharply, slipping on the wet mud. The living darkness lashed out at her.

It was as if a giant hand had seized hold of her, picking her up effortlessly and throwing her. She found herself flying backwards through the air, unable to stop herself, and hit the water with a tremendous splash. The impact was hard enough to leave her dazed.

As she sank she felt currents beneath the water – currents that, in a stagnant swamp, shouldn't possibly be there – seize hold of her, dragging her deeper. She struggled against them – tried to kick back towards the surface – but the current was too strong to break with her head still spinning. A moment later, everything went dark. She had the brief, disorientating impression of being swallowed by a giant mouth.

It was some kind of underwater passageway, built from stone, she realised after a few seconds. She banged and bounced against the hard walls, trying to find something to grab onto and stop herself being pulled any deeper. All she succeeded in doing was tearing a nail off amid a brief flaring of sun-bright agony. Her head knocked hard against something solid, and her lungs screamed for oxygen. Panic started to grow . . .

Then she felt herself being dragged rapidly upwards again, the grip on her resisting all of her efforts to break it.

She broke the surface, gasping and spluttering, head still spinning in disorientation.

After a while, her head started to clear slightly, and the panic subsided enough for her to be able to take in something of her surroundings. She was inside some kind of derelict structure made from stone. The roof had fallen in at some point, years or even centuries past to judge from all the vines growing down through the gap. Sparse light filtered down through the clouds and mist into the chamber, drawing everything in deep pools of shadow.

Wincing, she grasped hold of the edge of the pool she was floating in and pulled herself out, back onto dry – or at least semi-dry – land. She doubled over, coughing up foul tasting water.

As the coughing subsided, she straightened, all too aware of the eerie quiet. She tried to estimate how far she'd been pulled, but she had no real sense of it. A hundred yards? Two? More. Less. Any of them could have been right. Clearing her throat, she called out, as loud as she could. "Canderous!"

Her voice sounded feeble, echoing wildly from the surrounding walls. She waited, but there was no answer. After a few seconds, she tried again. "Jansa!"

This time she disturbed something roosting. She had a brief impression of something black with wings, flapping past her face, before streaking away through the gap in the broken roof. Slowly her heart subsided back down from her throat.

Her eyes began to adjust to the surrounding gloom. There was another statue, standing in a dark alcove.

It was very similar to the first one she'd encountered: a robed, featureless figure of stained grey stone. This one was in better condition, not so much exposed to the entropy of the swamp. Her immediate and instinctive was reaction was to shy away from it. She struggled to contain rising tides of strangling fear, repeating the Jedi Code over and over inside her head.

The light filtering through the broken ceiling caught on something, gleaming on the far wall. Bastila frowned, peering at it. After a brief, uncertain pause, she started to walk towards it. Her gaze kept shifting sideways to the alcove and the statue, as if waiting for it to come to life and jump down.

As she got closer, she saw it was what looked to be a metal panel set into the surrounding stonework. It was covered by a thick layer of accrued grime, but she could see that beneath that, it was highly polished.

Tentatively she wiped a hand across the metal, revealing a smooth, mirror-like surface. Her reflection looked back at her, pale and wan in the dim light. There was an odd distortion to it, which she found troubling in a way she couldn't quite pinpoint. She peered at it more closely, and of course, her reflection peered back. There was a tight, uneasy feeling in her gut, and her teeth were set on edge.

Her reflection winked at her.

She took a startled step backwards, almost stumbling over in her haste. The reflection didn't. In the mirror, over the reflection's shoulder, she could see the statue began to glow, a humanoid figure forming from the strange light and jumping lightly down from the pedestal.

Lightsaber igniting, Bastila whirled to face it.

-s-s-

"It helps somewhat if I try to view it as a practical lesson in applied anger management." Yuthura smiled, though there was a slightly ironic twist to her voice as she spoke.

They were separated by a layer of humming, shifting forcefield, and inside her cell Yuthura was wearing a neural disruptor collar. The sight of that gave Tamar his own particular set of anger management issues to resist.

"Although it would probably be a better sign of progress when I stop feeling it's an accomplishment when I manage to restrain myself from Force-choking my interrogators, and start viewing it as a failing for even allowing myself to contemplate it."

Tamar just about managed a smile in return. "If this is Marshall we're taking, then believe me, I think even Master Vandar would have struggled to maintain his serenity after a long spell in his company."

Having just gotten out of a lengthy conversation – or to be slightly more accurate, a raging argument – with the man, Tamar had been left fighting down a strong and completely un-Jedi-like urge to pound the Republic intelligence officer's face flat. He let out a breath. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't be in there. I'm doing what I can to get you out, but it's taking rather more time and effort than I'd hoped."

Yuthura shook her head. "Tamar, let's be honest here. We both expected to be occupying prison cells right now. The fact that you're not means the situation is progressing far better than we anticipated. You can't waste your time worrying about me when there so many other more important considerations. And . . . well, I've been in many worse places than this."

_But that doesn't make it right_. He didn't say it though, not wanting to waste this time by getting into another argument. As well as Marshall, he also managed to end up rowing with Jolee – who'd finished off saying more or less what Yuthura just had.

_Look, stop acting like a Wookiee with a sore head and let him have his little victory for now. Let his ego be massaged by getting his way. She's not going anywhere and she's not being mistreated. I already checked that myself. Keep your powder dry until getting her out will actually achieve something other than alienating a man you might soon have need of, unlikely though that prospect might seem right now. Besides, don't you have other things you need to be concentrating on? Hell's teeth, boy, how did you ever get to be a Jedi Knight? Standards are _definitely_ dropping since my day._

"You know, I think this is the first time I've seen you wearing Jedi robes?" she said softly, tilting her head slightly to one side as she looked at him appraisingly. "They suit you, I think; give you an air of dignity."

He touched the collar of the robe slightly self-consciously. "They do? To be honest, I don't feel particularly dignified. More scratchy and uncomfortable. Maybe that's why I don't wear them that often."

"And we both know that's not true at all."

"Perhaps not," he admitted.

The truth of it was that he still didn't think of himself as a Jedi. The few weeks of training that he'd initially received, before going out to seek the star maps, had always been tinged with a sense of unreality – he would do what was necessary; his duty, but afterwards, when it was over, he would go back to being what he really was. The subsequent revelations had, of course, changed everything – on a rational level at least. But even though he'd become more involved with the everyday workings of the Jedi Order over the past eight months, he still always felt detached – like he was pretending to be something he simply was not. And that was before taking into account his objections to the Code, or at least, the way the code was currently interpreted and taught.

His hand lifted briefly from his side, suddenly wanting to reach out and touch her, though of course the forcefield was in the way. He let it drop again in frustration.

She smiled, as if reading his thoughts. "'It is your actions that ultimately make you a Jedi. Not your thoughts or your doubts'. Something my teacher told me on Dantooine a few months ago when I was going through a particularly bad patch."

He nodded. "Jolee said something similar. Although I seem to recall more insults and rambling digressions in his version."

She stifled back laughter. It passed quickly and her expression became serious. "Have they found anything useful from what we brought back from Dantalus yet?"

The knowledge that Marshall would probably have several entire different litters of kittens if he knew this information was being given over to a prisoner with no official security clearance gave Tamar a certain amount of petty satisfaction. "The comm. logs have been decrypted. There's a team of analysts poring over them as we speak. We've already found a few interesting nuggets. There were a lot of conversations conducted between Auza's palace and a place called Berchest in the Colonies."

"I've heard of it. Quite a tourist attract, at least before the wars. Famous for its red-orange seas and crystal cities."

"Well you know a damn sight more than me then. Carth was posted there for a short period after the Mandalorian wars. He's gone along with an intelligence team to take a look. Left about twelve hours ago when we stopped over at Nam Chorios. I think he was pretty much desperate for anything useful to do."

"Is that what's worrying you?"

He blinked, but realised he shouldn't really be surprised by her ability to read his emotions with such apparent ease. Not after what they'd shared. Then he shook his head. "No. No, if anything it's a relief. Not that I want rid of him, but I can't help feeling that away from me is possibly a good thing right now." An exhalation. "No, I suppose it's Taris that has got me worried." He scratched the tip of his nose. "Three good friends of mine are listed as missing after an attack on a survey team their."

"I'm sorry."

He managed a half-smile. "Thank you. It's . . . well I can't imagine them dying like that. Not Mission. Not Zaalbar. Not Juhani. I'm sure they're still alive, and we've sent out another team to investigate what happened . . ."

"And you feel guilty about not going along with that team."

"Even though I know that the most likely reason for the attack was to draw me out of hiding," he agreed.

"I met Jedi Juhani on Dantooine," Yuthura said after a slight pause. "I suppose it would be directly before she joined up with the Taris survey. We talked briefly. I . . ." She hesitated just fractionally. "Liked her." Then, "No, you're right. I can't imagine her dying like that either."

He nodded, frowning – changed the subject. "We've also found reference to the name of Auza's apprentice. Elleste Strine. Although no doubt the name is about as genuine as her apprenticeship."

There was a faint flicker of reaction in Yuthura's eyes.

"That name is familiar to you."

Yuthura's face was pale, her head tails conspicuously still. "She passed through the academy on Korriban under my . . . tutelage. Very strong in the Force, and a perfect poster child for the Sith." Her voice was sad. "The woman we encountered on Coruscant was most definitely not Elleste Strine."

_Of course not_. "But if our Sith friend had her killed in order to assume her identity . . . it gives us another point along her back-trail to investigate at least."

"There are several very sizable assumptions wrapped up in there, though I don't suppose you need me to point that out."

And the fact it was one of the best leads they had was also a rather crushing indictment of the amount of information they'd managed to discover. He knew that well enough. "It may be slightly more interesting to note that there are several log entries that place Elleste Strine on Coruscant. After our particular encounter."

"That is . . . interesting."

Tamar was more inclined to use words such as disturbing, but simply nodded.

"Was there anything on the data core?"

And there was another bone of contention he had with Marshall. As of a couple of hours ago, the intelligence officer's best slicers – or at least, the best slicers available on the _Winding Way_ – had failed to scratch the surface of the data core's encryption. Yet he'd still refused point blank to allow T3 access to it, muttering about things like evidence contamination and procedure. Tamar suspected his real reasons had more to do with pride.

"It's being worked on," he stated sourly.

Before he was able to expand, the deck beneath him lurched violently, sending him reeling. The lights flickered and there was a decidedly ominous groaning sound from the surrounding superstructure.

Then everything levelled out again. Yuthura winced, rubbing her shoulder where she'd been thrown into the cell's wall. Their eyes met.

They both knew what it meant without having to say anything.

Something had yanked them violently out of hyperspace, and by far the most likely cause was an encounter with the gravity shadow projected by an interdictor ship.

-s-s-

Red and yellow lightsaber blades clashed with a sharp crack, locking together.

For several seconds the two battling opponents vied for supremacy, their lightsabers humming and crackling against each other as their muscles strained. Then, groaning with effect, Bastila shoved back hard, throwing her opponent off.

Her opponent seemed willing enough to go with the move, landing with cat-like grace. The twin red blades of their saber-staff glowed malevolently.

"Very good, my dear. Is that anger I sense? I think it is. Embrace it. It goes very nicely with all that fear." The voice was female: mocking; darkly familiar.

Bastila's opponent was Bastila too.

The two Bastila's circled one another warily, lightsabers ready, each of them looking for an opening.

The second Bastila was robed in black, the robes resembling those that Darth Revan had once worn, though minus the concealing mask. And while she could have been the original Bastila's twin, it was her twin as a three-week-old corpse.

Her skin looked grey and greasy, veins showing at her throat and temple, black where the darkside energies flowing through her had tainted her blood into something tar-like and corrupt. Formerly blue eyes had turned pale and milky, as if cataracts had grown across her irises – though it was apparent enough that she could still see well enough. Her hair, meanwhile, hung lankly, and it appeared that entire handfuls of it had simply fallen out.

Bastila launched another attack, twin yellow blades striking in a rapid flurry, first high, then low. Her dark reflection stood firm, parrying each thrust and countering adroitly.

Deflecting a blow past her shoulder, Bastila pivoted and whipped her lightsaber round at knee height. Her reflection hurdled effortlessly, kicking out and catching her a glancing blow to the side of the head. She staggered, backing off rapidly, desperately parrying the flurry of blows that rained in.

Finally, she managed to stabilize the situation again, locking their blades once more.

For the second time, Bastila's dark mirror seemed content to let herself be thrown back, out of the stalemate.

This time though, Bastila came charging in straight behind her shove, trying to take advantage. Her reflection was ready for her, simply extending her hand, palm outwards, and sending a pummelling wave of Force into her chest at point blank range.

Unable to catch herself, Bastila slammed back into a broken, vine-covered wall hard enough to blast all the breath from her body. She slid down to her knees in the middle of a dirty puddle, shoulders heaving.

Dark Bastila laughed, walking towards her slowly, in no apparent hurry. "Pathetic. Truly pathetic."

Bastila said nothing, ignoring the pain as she hauled herself upright, struggling to catch her breath.

"Is this all you are? Too riven by darkness and turmoil to be a Jedi. Too paralysed by fear and guilt to be a Sith. Honestly, I'm embarrassed to think I could come from something such as you."

Bastila managed to twist away from a slash that would have rent her from shoulder through to hip, spinning towards the centre of the chamber where there was more room to fight effectively. "Yet you still seem to be having trouble killing me."

Her twin laughed. "Trouble, my dear? Not at all. I'm simply . . . having fun – dragging the moment out and savouring. If you were any kind of threat I'd kill you quickly to end the danger, but you're not, so I prefer to make it last. So much more . . . enjoyable that way."

Bastila launched a quick attack, her lightsaber weaving through a series of dazzling patterns, but her twin countered without apparent effort. They broke off from each other, circling slowly again.

"Those saber lessens from Master Zhar are still serving you well I see." Her dark half's tone was slyly mocking. "A pity everything else the Jedi taught you has proved so worthless, now that you've finally fallen from their decrepit order for good."

There was another rapid exchange of attacks and parries, neither of them gaining any advantage.

"I have learnt from my mistakes. I've . . ." Bastila's jaw snapped shut as she cut herself off, flushing in annoyance for allowing herself to be drawn into a verbal response. She blocked an almost lazy saber thrust, but her reflection dodged her riposte with equal ease.

A mocking chuckle. "You've learnt? Please dear. I know you. Much to my disgust, I am you. You haven't even accepted the real reasons that you fell, let alone learnt anything from it."

In response, Bastila launched a flurry of fast, aggressive saber strokes, driving her reflection relentlessly back before her, but failing to breach her guard. Eventually her momentum stalled, and the attack petered out to nothing.

Her reflection looked amused. "Yes, let your anger out. Embrace it. Take strength from it. Try and strike me down."

Bastila let out a shuddering breath and backed off slowly, keeping her lightsaber at the ready, but held defensively.

Her reflection's smile widened. "You still tell yourself that the reasons for your fall are understandable; forgivable even. You take comfort from the fact you weren't in your right mind, warped and twisted by Malak's tortures. You console yourself that it came out of your self-sacrifice anyway, trading yourself to save Revan and the others – even the entire Republic itself. You mitigate your guilt by letting yourself believe that you were weakened by exposure to Revan's taint – that it was therefore as much his fault as yours. You flee from the truth at every turn and wrap yourself in a comfort blanket made from lies."

"No." Then, "What would you know of the truth?"

"Interesting question." Her reflection smirked at her. "I am you, dear. So I know exactly what you do of the truth. Which may be a lot, or may be a little. Who can tell?"

Bastila said nothing. Her reflection swatted aside her attempted attack with almost contemptuous ease.

"The reality is, you didn't sacrifice yourself for Revan or the Republic at all. You sacrificed yourself for yourself. You sacrificed yourself for glory and for vanity. You saw your chance to put aside your doubts and failings and be the Republic's saviour – legend and paragon to inspire future generations for thousands of years to come: Nomi Sunrider reborn, only more so. And in your pride you jumped at the chance the moment it became available."

"No, that isn't true." Her voice sounded weak in her own ears, horribly uncertain.

"Isn't it?" Again, they traded blows to little advantage, perfectly matched. "Look at your memories and tell me again that I lie."

Bastila remained utterly silent this time.

"If they're the same memories that I see, then we have Revan standing in tableau with Malak. Malak is holding Revan trapped in a stasis field, apparently ready to strike him down. But look a little closer this time. Don't just leap straight in. Is that Revan, still protected by energy shields, fresh and barely injured? Is that Malak, wounded and battered, playing his last desperate card? Was it really Revan who needed saving? It matters not. You saw the chance for your big moment, and _nothing_ was going to get in the way. Certainly not reality."

"That is _not_ what happened." Her next sequence of attacks was conducted with such fury that she finally managed to blast a hole in her reflection's guard, slicing through her robes just above the left hip and cutting deep.

Her reflection just retreated a few more steps, seemingly unaffected. There was no telltale reek of cauterised flesh; no indication she'd even connected with anything solid. "Well done. You're so much stronger when you let your emotions feed you rather than cripple you."

She parried the next few saber strokes as Bastila tried to press home the advantage, altering the entire flow of momentum and eventually forcing her back. "So what happened, dear, if not that?"

"I . . . I loved him . . . I couldn't . . ." Her jaw locked tight.

"You _loved_ him? Is that what you call it? Please. The Jedi destroyed your ability to love, or even function as a human being." Their lightsabers locked again, though this time her reflection pushed in hard, refusing to be shoved away like before. Bare inches separated their faces. "Maybe your ego enjoyed the thought that he might love you. What could have been more fitting in a fairytale sort of way? The beautiful princess who saves the life of a ravaging beast, leading him to redemption and transforming him into a handsome prince so they can all live happily . . ."

Bastila head-butted her reflection in the face.

Her reflection reeled back in surprise, but managed to parry an attack that would have cut her in two at the waist. She smiled, displaying bloodstained teeth. "Oh excellent. That's the spirit. Let it all out." She deflected another overeager attack from Bastila, her counter nearly skewering her.

"And as for the taint . . .. That's your biggest, darkest secret isn't it, my dear? The one you never dare to even look at, because what you see there scares you so much."

Bastila's teeth clenched hard, choking down her response.

Her reflection continued smugly. "When you knelt over Revan's body on the bridge of his flagship and refused to let his spirit ebb away you didn't feel any taint, did you? Or rather, no taint that was markedly different to the one already inside you. Here was the Dark Lord of Sith, and what you sensed inside him – all his great and vast darkness – was already oh so familiar from your own heart."

"Lies." Bastila hammered a vicious overhead chop down at her dark twin's head, but she simply caught it and turned it away before skipping back a couple of steps and continuing as if nothing had happened.

"When the Masters spoke of the danger of being exposed to Revan's darkness you nodded in agreement and gave all the responses you'd learned they liked. The ones that earned you pleased smiles and pats on the head. _Such a good girl_. You couldn't tell the truth, could you? Force no! They wouldn't like that _at all_, would they?"

Another exchange of blows left Bastila breathing hard, straining to control her anger; straining to ignore her reflection's words, though each one pierced her like a tiny poison barb in her soul.

"You never fell through Malak's torture, did you? Because you'd already fallen to your pride long before that. The torture just gave you the excuse you needed to admit it and embrace it."

"No!"

_Listen to her words. _The voice that spoke inside Bastila's head startled her back from the edge, jolting through all the boiling shame and guilt and poisonous anger that had built inside her. _Don't feel them._

The wild, uncontrolled attack she would have launched faltered and died before it began. Her reflection carried on talking, seemingly oblivious.

". . . And the way your little dalliance ended was so perfect for you, wasn't it? You could go back to being the unfeeling paragon of Jedi ideals, only now with added martyrdom to make you even more special. Falling for love, and then giving it up for the Order. Such a wonderful, inspiring, tragic tale." A peel of gleefully mocking laughter.

"Except now the bastard's gone and spoilt it all, hasn't he?" She intercepted Bastila's next attack and drove her backwards with a sustained flurry that had her defences twisting desperately to try to counter it. "You were fine when you could fool yourself into believing that he was being the perfect, emotionless Jedi too, and that was why he rejected you. In fact, it was a relief, wasn't it? Much easier this way than actually having to deal with a real relationship and all its complexities.

"But of course, now you know that was never his reason. All its taken is a few months for him to move on to someone else. He never did love you. He just played you for an idiot, manipulating your weakness and turmoil to score another notch in his belt."

"You sound utterly ridiculous."

"Do I? Then why does it sting you so very badly? The Republic's sweetheart and hero, glowing poster girl and inspiration for a billion different fantasies. Who wouldn't want you? Of course, once he'd actually had you, he found out that you were far too cold and wet a fish to be interesting any more . . ."

Again, the anger flared. The dark side energies were all around her, so easy for her to grasp. So easy to embrace and strike down her reflection, destroying her utterly – shutting her up. All she had to do was reach out and . . .

_Listen to her words. Don't feel them_.

A shudder passed through Bastila. She'd heard all these words – or their equivalents – before, inside her own head, many times, over and again. Her guard dropped, leaving herself, just for a moment, completely vulnerable. Her reflection made no move to take advantage, though it would have been easy for her to do so and end the fight there and then.

Of course she didn't. Finally, Bastila started to understand.

_Look at her,_ the odd voice in her head advised, somewhat belatedly.

_Oh, shut up_. But the brief distraction enabled her let go of the poison burning inside her a fraction more fully. Darkness still throbbed and pulsed all around her like a black tide, but she wasn't part of it. Not wholly. Not yet.

Her choice was still there. Like it had been there before, with Malak.

_They're your doubts speaking. However close to the truth they seem cut, they're not. They're . . ._

_I told you to shut up_. For some reason, she suddenly felt like laughing out loud; giddily insane. _By the Force, if I was anything like you he must have found me _so_ infuriating . . ._

Her reflection started talking again, but this time Bastila wasn't paying attention. "You can't hurt me, can you?" she told her softly. "You're not real. All you can do is make me hurt myself."

Her reflection stopped, staring at her. Briefly, fury flickered across her face, but it was quickly suppressed. "Really?" She arched an eyebrow. "What would you say this is then?" Extending a hand, Force lightning spat from her fingertips, striking Bastila in the chest.

As her nervous system overloaded with electricity, her legs buckled, pitching her to the ground. The pain was excruciating, but her jaw was – like the rest of her – locked too tight for her to scream. Pain was easy though. Pain was concrete.

Pain she could cope with.

Once the lightning subsided, Bastila staggered back to her feet, drawing on the Force with a measure of confidence for the first time since setting foot on Dromund Kaas. A protective sheath of charged particles wrapped around her just in time to absorb and deflect the worst of the next lightning bolt that hit her. The few strands of her hair that weren't completely sodden lifted out on either side of her head, floating.

"I'd say that was pretty much pathetic."

Her reflection for once had no snappy retort. Their lightsabers came together in the same dance of thrust, counterthrust and riposte that they'd been through half a dozen times already. Like before the result was no discernable advantage to either of them.

Dark Bastila aimed an almost perfunctory slash at her counterpart, so easy to block it was almost laughable.

Instead of parrying, this time Bastila drew her own lightsaber quite deliberately out of the way. Her reflection's red lightsaber blade struck her beneath the shoulder, passing across through her torso and exiting up through her opposite collarbone.

Nothing very much happened. "Ooh, that tickles."

Her reflection stopped and stared at her in shock. Bastila simply leant across and rapped her on the forehead with her knuckle.

Her reflection shattered.

-s-s-

The impact made the deck tilt violently beneath Tamar's feet, sending him reeling sideways, his shoulder slamming hard into the wall. Alongside him, Yuthura was rather more nimble on her feet, keeping her balance adroitly.

"How much more of a pounding can we take, do you think?" she asked clinically as she paused to help him upright.

"Oh, these things are pretty sturdy. If you're careful not to hit anything critical." His reply was equally as blasé as the question, though inwardly he was getting old flashes from the _Endar Spire_.

"And this strikes you as careful does it?"

He shrugged as another vibration, somewhat less violent than the previous, shuddered through the ship. "Well they demanded our surrender. I don't think destroying us is their first preference."

"And isn't that a relief." Her head tails wove sarcastically, before falling flat against her shoulders. They resumed running. Alarms were going off all around them.

As soon as they'd been dragged out of hyperspace Tamar had tried to get through to Captain Greth, but the call had been diverted to Jolee. A quick appraisal of the situation had told him all he needed to know.

He'd been able to see what was happening in his head, without the need for viewports, or tactical displays. It wasn't the Force. It was simply cold, certain knowledge that he suspected came straight from the deep portions of his brain where remnants of the old Revan still lived on. He certainly doubted the Jedi Council would have given him that kind knowledge on the tactical intricacies of space battle. Far too close to the reality to risk.

An interdictor ship sitting at the apex of a killing arc that covered approximately 120° of a circle. Spread out across the arc would be two or three separate battle groups, sitting waiting for the interdictor to pull their target back to sub-light, ready to pound it in a withering crossfire.

Interdictors came in two flavours. First, there were the massive battleships that chose to forgo a fraction of their awesome gun power to install gravity mass protectors – monstrous vessels like Saul Karath's old flagship, the _Leviathan_. If one of these got you, you were basically doomed, though thankfully this kind of ship was extremely rare. Much more common were smaller vessels the size of a light frigate – basically a mass projector with engines, and very thick armour and shields. It was one of these later vessels, of an old Mandalorian design, that had grabbed them.

On being ambushed, the obvious move was to attack the Interdictor immediately with everything you had, hoping to disable it before you were yourself crippled, then leaps back to hyperspace and away. Unfortunately, though obvious, the tactic was also doomed to failure.

An Interdictor was specifically designed to take a pounding, and inevitably, any ambushed ship would find its own shields stripped away long before the interdictor was more than scratched. At that point, it was all over.

If you wanted to escape the ambush, instead of attacking the interdictor you needed to turn immediately about, every fraction of a second critical, and head directly towards one of the battle groups on the killing arc's perimeter – preferably the centremost one. You needed luck on your side, and strong shields, but if you were quick enough you'd find yourself in amongst the ambushers, with the other groups unable to fire on you for fear of hitting their own ships, and the ships you were flying through wrong footed and unable to turn about and get a fix on you quickly enough. You didn't stop to fight, and as soon you made it past the enemy's lines – hopefully without your engines being disabled in the process – you made the leap to hyperspace.

Most Interdictors tended to be somewhat reluctant to project their mass shadow through their own allies, particularly if you managed to pick the battle group containing their fleet commander.

Even that was, at best, a 40-60 bet.

Captain Greth had gone for the obvious. He'd started pounding at the interdictor immediately, and any chance of breaking the ambush had been lost.

Plan B, which they were now pursuing – if it could be called a plan – was to meet the boarding parties head on and fight them off for as long as possible in the hope that the attackers would make a slip somehow, or some other miracle occurred.

Tamar's inner voice was somewhat scathing about the plan's merits. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be too many alternatives.

The blast doors in front of them, leading down to one of the Winding Way's landing bays, slid open. Four pirates in full Mandalorian battle armour, accompanied by at least half a dozen others, were coming the other way.

His and Yuthura's lightsabers snapped on simultaneously, bathing the corridor in a garish combination of purple and cyan light.

"Jedi!" came the shout. Immediately after it, a volley of blaster fire rang out. Tamar's lightsaber span and danced blocking the shots as the Force guided his movements subconsciously.

Once the initial volley had subsided, he sent a crashing wave of Force through the blast doors to buffet the pirates, knocking those in front tumbling back into their comrades. It was rather like watching a line of dominoes collapsing as they ended up sprawled in a twisted knot of tangled limbs.

More of the pirates came charging up behind them.

He could feel Yuthura reaching grimly into their minds and twisting them with projected fear and confusion. One pirate panicked and shot another in the back. Someone else fumbled a grenade and dropped it at his own feet. After the explosion filled the corridor with smoke and screams, another turned and fled.

Tamar used the Force to guide his lightsaber systematically along the corridor to finish them off, glowing cyan blade cleaving armour and flesh with equal ease. He felt their lives extinguish, one by one.

By the time it was done, Tamar felt sick; hollowed out and empty. Yuthura . . . the feeling he got from Yuthura was much worse, but when he looked across at her she just nodded, lips compressed tight.

Never had the words, _there is no emotion_, felt quite so much like a curse.

Breathing deeply, he hit his communicator. "Bay three holding firm. Jolee, what's the situation?"

There was a crackling pause before any response came. "Our friendly neighbourhood pirate captain is rather displeased about our continued resistance, and my does he know some interesting language to express that opinion. To be honest he was giving me earache so I switched him off. At least three more landing craft have made it through our defences. One should be coming your way any time."

"Good to know."

"At least HK seems to getting some fun out of this."

Tamar's lips twitched with a tiny flash of humour. "Which is, of course, everyone's primary concern."

"You want a realistic assessment?" Grim weariness suddenly punctuated Jolee's façade of dry humour.

Tamar sighed. "Yeah, why not."

"We're up to our nostrils in Bantha poodoo and someone's getting ready to pour on another couple of sack loads."

The sound of pounding footsteps came from somewhere beyond the blast doors, approaching rapidly.

The second wave of pirates fell just as easily the first. It was brutal, bloody, sickening slaughter as he and Yuthura annihilated them with systematic and merciless efficiency.

Suddenly everything was still. Even the constant pounding that the _Winding Way_ was taking seemed, momentarily at least, to have stopped. "Jolee?" Tamar asked tentatively.

The reply was so long in coming he was about to give up. Then, "Would you like the good news or the bad news?" It broke off into stifled coughing.

Tamar's mouth felt dry. "Um, how about the good?"

"Those nice Mandalorian pirates have stopped attacking us and are turning and trying to run away."

He tried to work out if he'd misheard. That made no sense whatsoever, anyway that he could figure it. "And the bad?" The feeling he had in his chest could better be described as plummeting than sinking.

"They're running because what looks like an entire Sith Armada has just dropped out of hyperspace."

Tamar swore beneath his breath. Yuthura looked at him questioningly. He grimaced. "Are our engines intact enough to make a run for it?"

"Why, I don't believe anyone else here on the bridge has thought of trying that."

Tamar winced, but knew the sarcasm was well deserved. Abruptly the deck beneath them jerked and tilted alarmingly, sending them both tumbling. His head cracked hard against the wall, and the metal of the _Winding Way__'s_ hull seemed to be twisting and buckling, groaning like a congregation of several hundred banshees with killer hangovers.

Briefly, gravity gave out entirely, and Tamar felt himself floating up in the air, too dazed to think about grabbing onto something to secure himself. Abruptly it came back on again. He fell back to the deck with a heavy, graceless thud.

When his head had finally stopped spinning, and it seemed like they'd levelled out, he picked himself up cautiously. Yuthura was grimacing, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth as she did likewise.

Fires crackled; smoke filled the air. The alarms went on, unabated.

Looking at each other silently, neither of them was quite sure whether they'd made it to hyperspace, or were now simply floating dead in space.


	7. Thieves in the Temple

**7. Thieves in the Temple**

Constant flickers of lightning illuminated the Republic gunboat as it descended towards the makeshift landing pad – little more than a space cleared amidst Taris's endless fields of debris. Its passage looked jerky and fraught as the strong crosswinds buffeted it violently, but its pilot guided it true. Dirty grey snow swirled thickly, settling in filthy drifts.

Juhani watched its descent wordlessly, vague relief puncturing the numbness.

Her tattered robe flapped around her body. She looked gaunt. She'd lost almost a third of her body mass during the long, benighted trek through the undercity. A Cathar's metabolism burned fast and hot, and their rations had been pitiful – particularly with a Wookiee as a travelling companion. It had gotten to the point where they'd even briefly considered trying to cook and eat the flesh of the Rakghouls that constantly harried their progress.

Next to her, the only sound coming from Zaalbar was the slightly wheezy rasp of his breathing.

Never much of a one for conversion – except perhaps with Mission, who was more than happy to take over ninety-percent of the required burden – he'd withdrawn into himself almost totally over the last few days. Sometimes even direct queries had gone completely unanswered.

In a human, she would have feared that this indicated that he was giving up and succumbing to despair. But she didn't quite get that sense from Zaalbar. Instead, he seemed to be . . . focusing. She wasn't entirely sure that was right, but she couldn't really think of a better way of explaining it. Mentally preparing himself for the trials that lay ahead, perhaps.

The gunship touched down gently and its repulsors powered down. The snow around it began to melt visibly and immediately from the heat radiating from its hull, accrued during atmospheric re-entry.

They'd reached the surface slightly under 36 hours ago, finally managing to make contact with another of the Taris survey teams. From there, they'd been transported to this makeshift field hospital, where their wounds and malnutrition could be treated. Republic security forces had also spent several hours interviewing them.

With the news that no trace had been found of Mission there'd been a brief moment when Juhani had feared there was going to be a case of shooting – or more accurately, savagely mauling – the messenger. But the volcanic flash of Zaalbar's emotions she'd sensed hadn't had any outward manifestation. For some reason she'd found that slightly worrying.

The gunship's boarding ramp opened with a soft hissing sound. A couple of Republic military personal descended, hunch-shouldered and leaning forward against the wind. They moved quickly to secure the gunship's landing gear to cables in order to prevent the vessel being flipped if one of Taris's frequent storms hit.

Then a third figure, dressed in slate grey Jedi robes, came into view.

Juhani stepped forward, away from Zaalbar's side, striding out across the landing pad until they were separated by bare meters. For a moment they just stood, looking at each other.

"Belaya?" Juhani asked quietly.

Belaya's mouth opened to say something, but closed quickly with no words spoken. Juhani couldn't be certain, but it looked as if there were tears in her eyes. It might just have been the effects of the wind. They embraced.

**-s-s-**

"Where the hell have you been then?" Canderous's gravel-rough voice greeted Bastila as she loomed out of the mist in front of them. His vibro-sword dropped back to his side and the set of his shoulders relaxed just slightly.

A fractional smile touched her lips. There'd actually been a degree of relief in the Mandalorian's voice, unless she was completely mistaken. Whether it was over seeing her safe, or simply due to her not being another ravening vornskr was perhaps open to question.

She suspected that only a few hours earlier any concern from him would have annoyed the hell out of her. Strangely, right now it didn't. "I just needed to be alone with myself for a while. Work a few things out to my satisfaction."

He looked at her strangely. Wondering over her sanity perhaps. "And did you?"

She shrugged. "I . . . I think I made a start on it, at least."

Canderous grunted, looking her up and down. "You look absolutely terrible."

_No doubt_. She simply raised one eyebrow in response. "Hmm? Well I don't see you having to beat the ladies off with a stick just at the moment either."

The flash of surprise in his eyes almost made her laugh. That she didn't was down to a vague suspicion that she wasn't really fully in her right mind just now. Walking back from the ruined mirror-chamber, she'd tried talking to the voice in her head – sure that it wasn't part of her. There hadn't been any response, so she'd ended up having a conversation with herself, talking aloud as she slogged through the swamp water and the clinging mist.

The words of her dark reflection still echoed within her, and some of them burned intensely. But she had found that she was able to bear them without flinching away. Most of them, at least. Like most demons, they didn't seem quite so terrible or frightening held up in the cold light of day.

It took them about an hour to reach the Sith temple.

The structure loomed out of the mist in front of them – a louring battery of dark Force energy that appeared almost to have grown out of the surrounding swamp, accruing slowly over the centuries like a huge, malignant stalagmite. As the mist swirled and thinned briefly, strange and ominous looking towers could be glimpsed, reaching high above them. Like the rest of the structure, they had a disturbingly organic look to them.

Bastila stopped in her tracks so suddenly, neck craning upwards, that Velta Laska inadvertently walked straight into her back, sending her stumbling forwards. She managed to keep her balance barely, and chose to pretend she hadn't heard Canderous's quickly stifled snort of laughter.

There was still no sign of any Sith military presence. No guard posts. No patrols. No gun turrets or laser fences. No battle droids or assault vehicles. It was impossible to gain any sense of whether there was anything living in the structure through the Force, the pure darkside presence of the temple overwhelming everything else.

They walked the perimeter of the structure slowly and carefully. It was some time after noon and the heat and humidity were savage, every forward step sapping. Water sloshed and dripped. Insects droned. The palpable tension infecting them was just as sapping as the conditions.

Eventually, though, they ran out of excuses not to go inside.

A line of broken, vine-swathed pillars led up the temple's main – and indeed, only visible – entrance. The combined sound of their footsteps on the damp, decaying stone was conspicuously loud. Another pair of vornskr attacked without warning, bounding from the temple entrance at their approach. Like the other times they both immediately went for Bastila to the exclusion of everyone else.

"Some bastard's got to be controlling them," Canderous muttered afterwards, in the middle of cleaning the blood from the blade of his vibro-sword. "Animals just don't behave like that. I've hunted enough to know that."

_Terentatek's do_, Bastila thought but didn't say. As she looked down at the sundered corpses, blood being slowly absorbed by the porous grey stone, part of her wondered what it must be like, being born Force-sensitive in a place like this. That part shuddered.

Inside the temple progress was slow and tedious, moving through a procession of overgrown and decaying chambers with painstaking care, constantly on the lookout for traps or ambushes, or simply more of the vornskr. Minutes ticked by, stretching out into hours. Nothing was turned up though, one empty room following another. Gradually the edge of the tension became dulled by monotony. Only Jansa seemed to retain any enthusiasm, and there was the sense that even she was starting to succumb to the ennui as it became more and more apparent that the place had been thorough looted over the past centuries.

Now they stood in the only section of the temple that remained unexplored.

A broad hallway opened up in front of them. Vegetation forced its way up through the broken paving stones on the floor, and shelves of pale, variegated fungus grew up the walls, imparting a strange and slightly eerie splendour to the scene.

What gave them all pause were the deep, shadowy alcoves spaced every few metres along, ten on either side in all. Inside each alcove lurked another of the cowled and faceless statues. Halfway along the left-hand wall one of them had collapsed into several pieces, though the rest appeared to be intact. After her last couple of experiences with the things, Bastila found herself extremely reluctant to pass between them, her skin prickling with an unpleasant crawling sensation, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck rising. No one else – not even Canderous – seemed much more eager.

"So, what if our Sith friends decided to destroy whatever it was you think they came here for? Either that or simply took the fraking thing away with them when they left." Canderous's tone was sour as he broke the lingering silence that had settled in.

Bastila glanced at him sidelong. "Then we've had a wasted journey, haven't we?"

He muttered something she didn't catch, words drowned out by the constant dripping of muddy water through cracks in the ceiling.

She drew in a shuddering breath. Reaching out carefully with the Force, halfway expecting to stir another of the vornskr into frenzied assault through her efforts, she probed tentatively at each of the alcoves in turn. Despite the humidity, her mouth managed to feel dry, and her heart was suddenly tripping over far too quickly.

The measure of slightly unreal serenity she'd found after the confrontation with herself was, apparently, to be short lived.

Eventually she reached the conclusion that the statues were different to the ones she'd encountered in the swamp. Where those had been filled with active, almost living malevolence, these were hollow shells, anything they had once contained now departed. Although they reeked of darkside taint, it was nothing more than that of the temple as a whole.

"I see something. There, in the shadows."

Bastila jolted at the unexpected words. They belonged to Velta Laska. All heads swung slowly to look at the spot where the Ithorian was pointing.

-s-s-

Tamar stared at the pinprick of light high in the flawless, cobalt blue sky. As he watched it flared, brightness increasing several hundredfold, before slowly dying away again.

The last death throws of the _Long and Winding Way_.

"Well, that's that then."

Tamar nodded once, not looking round at the man who'd spoken – a fleet lieutenant by the name of Chinn.

They had actually made it to hyperspace ahead of the attacking Sith. Unfortunately, the _Long and Winding Way_ had been so badly damaged in the pirate ambush that they'd only been able to limp as far as the nearest planetary system before their hull began to loose structural integrity, forcing them to drop back to sub-light.

From then onwards the situation had deteriorated with an impressive degree of alacrity.

Micro-fractures had spread rapidly through the midsection of the _Winding Way__'s_ hull, causing breaches that opened half a dozen decks to vacuum. Amidst this, one of the portside turbolaser nacelles had buckled and ruptured under the stresses being inflicted on it, causing an explosion that managed to sever one of the ship's main coolant flows. Normally that wouldn't have been too much of a problem, a military vessel like the _Winding Way_ having a high degree of redundancy built into its critical systems. Unfortunately, two other key adjacent coolant flows had already been lost in the pounding they'd taken from the pirates.

As a result, one of the main portside engines had started to overheat, and an intense fire had broken out in the aft of the ship, cutting off portions of three more decks. A critical point in the ship's main reinforcing spine, already weakened from the pounding it had received, was directly in the path of the fire. As it began to heat rapidly, it started to bend alarmingly out of shape.

And that had accelerated the fracturing of the ship's hull exponentially.

At the point, the decision to abandon ship had been unavoidable. It had simply been a question of whether the _Winding Way_ broke up first, or the burning engine went critical and exploded.

Tamar drew his gaze down from the sky, sweeping the horizon.

He didn't even know what the planet was called, but this particular portion of it hardly seemed the ideal spot to have crash-landed. Arid badlands stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction – undulating ochre-coloured hills and deep winding gullies. Sparse vegetation – in the form of wizened and spiky shrubs – at least hinted at the possibility of water but they'd seen no actual trace of any. He suspected they'd need it before too long.

Earlier on, a few strange, double-winged creatures had been spotted in the distance, soaring on updrafts rising from the baking land, but as twilight faded smoothly towards the onset of night, all trace of them had gone. In contrast to just a couple of hours earlier there was very definite chill to the air, and the temperature was still dropping steadily.

Escaping the _Winding Way_ hadn't quite had the calamitous feel of imminent doom he remembered from the _Endar Spire_ – in large part due to the fact they weren't under constant enemy fire – but it had still been pretty hairy. Those lucky enough to be on the front and starboard areas of the frigate had been able to evacuate fairly safely on ships stored in the landing bays on that side of the vessel. Jolee and the droids, for instance, had made it safely to the _Ajunta's Blade_ and clear.

Unfortunately, he and Yuthura had been on the portside of the ship, cut off from the vest of the vessel by a combination of fires and vacuum. The only landing bays within reach were also open to vacuum, and it was questionable whether any of the ships stored there were in working order in any case, pirate boarding shuttles having apparently done a very thorough job of trashing them on the way in.

That had left the escape pods. _Déjà vu all over again, _Tamar thought dryly.

He'd gotten separated from Yuthura as they'd tried to help wounded crewmembers flee the ship. Consequently, they'd ended up evacuating on different pods.

At least he'd spoken with her via comm. since they'd landed, so he knew she'd gotten off safely. Unfortunately, it seemed that she'd touched down about sixty kilometres to the north of his position, with a dirty great canyon that spanned half this continent smack between them.

And worse, she was with Marshall and several other Republic intelligence personnel. It didn't, he supposed, reflect too well on himself that he'd come to regard them with almost as much suspicion and trepidation as he did the Sith. They were, after all, on the same side and working towards the same approximate goals.

On the bright side, Yuthura had reported that they'd managed to rescue Auza's data core from destruction with the rest of the ship.

"Over there." Another Republic officer whose name Tamar hadn't managed to catch gestured to the western horizon line – assuming that you called the direction where the sun set west. "See?"

Tamar saw well enough – a bright line in the sky that could only be the re-entry trail of another ship. As he looked, he spotted a second, and then a third, apparently evenly spaced.

His jaw tightened, and he had a sudden, ominous feeling inside his chest.

Theoretically they could have simply been more escape pods, or perhaps some of the ships that had evacuated from the _Winding Way_ earlier, looking to pick up survivors. Tamar somehow knew with absolutely certainty that they weren't though.

They were the Sith.

In their desperate flight from the pirate ambush, there hadn't been time to do anything to mask their hyperdrive wake. And this was the first point along that wake trail anyone would check.

The _Winding Way_ had put a distress call, aimed at the nearest Republic base at Cybloc, before it exploded. But it would be fourteen hours at the absolute earliest before anyone would answer it.

He glanced around at the others. Even without the benefit of the Force he could see from the collective look in their faces that they'd reached pretty much the same conclusion he'd just come to.

There were fifteen of them in all, gathered together from the various pods that landed in the immediate vicinity. Three of them were on stretchers, even a combination of kolto treatment and his efforts at Force healing not having done much more than make them slightly more comfortable. At least one, who had an appalling looking head injury, was unlikely to survive the night – even if they weren't going to be forced to spend it fleeing cross-country.

He touched his earpiece. "Yuthura, do you copy?"

A crackle of static, then, "I copy Tamar."

"Are you looking at the western horizon line? In the sky?" As he watched, he saw the lines blossom into scores of little dots – troops and equipment being dropped in from high altitude.

"I'm looking," she confirmed. Her voice sounded weary and strained.

No doubt the Sith had been able to trace their escape pods from orbit. Unlike on Taris there was no vast background noise of technology to mask their positions.

"They'll sweep up through the hills from the west, like beaters trying to flush guntek birds from the under brush and drive them towards the hunters' guns," he stated, switching over to coolly analytical mode. "They'll have already deployed another larger force somewhere up ahead, waiting for us to be driven into their arms. That means we'll either have to try break out the sides of the trap . . ." difficult, since a number of canyons and gullies hemmed them in, not easy to traverse at the best of times. ". . . Or somehow find a way to slip through their lines."

Needless to say, even more difficult.

There was a brief hesitation before Yuthura spoke again. "They have Black Dogs . . ." A tiny pause, before she clarified. "Dark Jedi Force trackers with them. If either of us calls on the Force for any reason they'll be able to zero in on our positions immediately."

He didn't ask her how she knew this. Standard procedure, he suspected.

"We'll need to go radio silent too," she added.

His mouth was dry. Their conversation felt disturbingly like a goodbye. His gut was churning, and none of the words he wanted to say would voice themselves. "Head north, as fast as you can. At least ten kilometres. Further if possible. Stick to whatever cover you can find, but not so that it delays you significantly. After that, while it's still dark, turn west. If you're quick enough you might make it round the end of their lines . . ."

"Tamar!" she snapped, cutting him off. The exasperation was clear in her voice – she already knew this of course, better than he did quite probably. Then, a moment later, more gently, "Take care. I . . .." Another pause. "Just take care."

"Take care," he echoed back lamely. There was so much more that needed to be said.

The comm. link shut off. The dots in the sky were growing larger.

Nearer.

-s-s-

The object, vaguely spherical, glinted softly where dim light caught on its surface. It was . . . well, it was about the size of a human head.

Bastila just nodded as Canderous looked to her for confirmation as to whether it was safe to approach it.

Stepping forward, he bent down, grunted once, and picked the object up. Something sizable dropped out of it, hitting the ground with a rather unpleasant sounding thud, before bouncing and rolling over a couple of times.

"Sith helmet," he commented, holding it up for them to see. "Complete with accompanying Sith head."

He nudged it over with his foot, peering down at it in distaste. "Given the humidity and the voraciousness of local insect life . . .." A short pause. "I'd estimate no more than a week old." He nudged the severed head with his foot, rolling it over. "Neck's been cauterised." He looked briefly back at Bastila as he said this.

Walking slowly and carefully a few more metres down the hall, Canderous stopped and grunted again. "And here we have some blood." He indicated great rusty brown streaks and swirling patterns spattered across the stonework. "A lot of it too. So not all lightsaber work." He took another few paces forward. "And a severed finger, wedged tight between two paving stones. Nice." Another glance back at Bastila. "Looks like an honest-to-goodness Iridorian slaughter-dance."

Which perhaps went some small way to explaining the lack of a Sith military presence. They were all dead.

Lieutenant Jansa had moved close to Canderous, her small, slight frame almost childlike next to his bulk. "Perhaps they turned on themselves," she said quietly. "There's something about this place . . . I don't know. It gets inside your head."

Bastila choked back a laugh, which she doubted would be well received. Rather an understatement, to say the least. It was all too easily imagine someone – particularly someone who embraced the darker side of their nature – succumbing to the surrounding taint as time passed, sanity slowly warping and cracking under the strain.

"And then, after killing each other, they cleaned up the mess?" Canderous asked, ever practical.

Jansa glared at him. "You call this clean?"

"Well there sure as hell ain't enough body parts to go with the blood."

"Maybe them vornskr ate 'em," one of the commandos suggested sourly.

In the end, the mystery of the missing bodies was solved soon enough.

At the end of the hallway, a large, vaulted chamber opened out before them. Dead in the centre of this was some kind of well – or perhaps, if you were inclined to morbidity, a sacrifice pit. They didn't need to look to find out that this was where the bodies had been dumped. The smell gave that away clearly enough from a distance of at least ten metres.

As Canderous shone a flashlight beam down, briefly illuminating the pit's contents, Jansa and one of the commandos stumbled away gagging. Bastila found it a struggle not to join them, her throat clenching spasmodically. The brief glimpse she'd received was the sort thing to burn itself indelibly into a person's nightmares.

And she had more than enough in the way of nightmares to be going on with already.

"Someone's still alive here," Canderous stated matter-of-factly as the flashlight beam snapped off. "Someone had to drag them here, and I'm not figuring the vornskr would feel the need."

Bastila nodded, images of what she'd seen in the pit still playing behind her eyes.

"You don't reckon they'd have gone? You're hardly going sit tight on top of that lot." That was Tasker.

_Always assuming that the person or persons hadn't simply killed themselves_, Bastila thought darkly. It was that kind of place.

"Best assume not, eh? That way we don't get bitten on the ass."

Bastila turned away from the pit, ostensibly studying some of the chamber's baroque décor. She wasn't really seeing it, and her hands gripped the hilt of her lightsaber tightly.

"Anything here seem like what we're looking for?"

She jolted slightly as Canderous ghosted silently up behind her. He could move incredibly quietly for such a big man. After a pause, she shook her head, a frown furrowing her brow. "I think . . . the brief image I got from him was something . . . spherical . . . circular. And a smaller chamber than this one." The Sith's crowned head had almost scraped the ceiling.

"Over here." Another of the commandos – a quiet, serious looking man called Antilles – called out, several minutes later. He sounded shaky. "Found something."

He was standing in the opening of what initially appeared to be nothing more than another alcove, though this one was absent of statues. It went back a few metres, and then turned at a right angle to the left into another passageway that was almost invisible from the outside.

As she looked at it, Bastila had a memory flash of something she'd glimpsed in the Sith's memories, superimposing itself over the opening, and stopped, staggering.

Canderous caught her arm. "This it?"

She nodded, unable to speak.

The passage led to another chamber, much smaller than the main one. Bastila experienced a profound sense of déjà vu as she stepped inside it, as if she'd been here before, though rationally she knew it wasn't her own memories she was experiencing.

The ceiling was about eight feet above the ground. Even given the crown, that would put the Sith as similar in stature to Malak. Bastila's lips compressed into a line.

The chamber was dominated by a strange, semi-spherical device that somewhat resembled an astrolabe, slightly over metre in diameter. It was made of some kind of dull, bronze-like metal, and was heavily streaked in pale blue-green verdigris. On the wall immediately behind it was a smooth stone disk, geometric patterns of Sith characters scribed around its rim.

"So what the hell is it? Another damned star map?" Canderous did not sound impressed.

If it was, it certainly wasn't anything of Rakatan design, Bastila thought. The technology looked far too crudely mechanical for that, and there was no sense of any kind of power stored within it. As far as she could tell, it was just . . . metal.

Jansa had stepped forward, peering at the contraption in a way that made her look almost comically myopic. "Not a star map," she said at length. "I think it might be the map of a planetary surface though – a portion of it, at least. See these things connected to the arms here?"

The objects she indicated resembled parts of the outer shell of a globe, though if that was there case there appeared to be a number of them missing. "Maybe they're supposed to represent tectonic plates or something. If you look closely, you can see lines and patterns scribed on their outer surface. It's difficult to make out because of all the wear . . .." Then, excitedly. "And that edge there? It matches that one way back up here almost perfectly. They're meant to fit together; I'm sure, forming one complete design."

Muttering to herself, Jansa dropped to her hands and knees, crawling beneath the strange not-astrolabe. Her voice rose abruptly in excited pitch. "There are six tracks down here, all with Sith numerals scribed around them. I think . . . I think if we know the correct numbers for each track, we move it round like so . . ." Abruptly the contraption made a harsh squeaking noise, and one of its constituent plates jerked round a fraction. "And everything fits together."

Bastila wandered past the strange contraption and looked up at the disk on the wall. The patterns of characters inscribed around the rim were arranged in six pairs, though she wasn't able to read them.

That was significant somehow . . .

"Do you think that these could represent galactic coordinates?" Velta Laska gurgled from behind her. Suddenly she felt very stupid indeed.

Jansa was abruptly crowding in close too. In her enthusiasm, she seemed transformed. "Yes, yes. Of course." Abruptly she pulled a datapad from her pocket and began feverishly typing something into it. A moment later came a muffled curse. "That can't be right. If they're galactic co-ordinates it indicates a point somewhere beyond the galactic rim."

Velta Laska leant over Jansa's shoulder. "You're using Coruscant as the zero point. This is ancient Sith, correct? Probably predating contact with the Republic, yes? It would use what – I'm sorry, I'm not so familiar with Sith culture – perhaps Korriban instead?"

"No, no." Jansa shook her head. "Korriban is unlikely. Although it's the best-known centre of the Sith among the general Republic populace, it was never actually the Sith capital at any point I'm aware of. I . . . I think Ziost might be a more likely bet, though of course, if I had a better idea of the exact time-period . . ." she trailed off, keying rapidly again.

A pause, then, "Damn, still just empty space according to this. I suppose it was too easy to be true"

"It's here." Bastila said softly.

"Pardon?" Both Jansa and the Ithorian looked round at her. They seemed to have forgotten there were other people present.

"The co-ordinates will be based on here. Dromund Kaas."

"Well, if you say so." Jansa sounded doubtfully.

A moment later, she was shaking her head again. "Nice try, but still empty. See?"

"The axis of alignment you're using is wrong," Canderous interrupted shortly, his voice contemptuous. "You're still using the Republic system. Honestly, so self-centred, you can't see the meteors for the asteroids . . .. The Mandalorians always used a different alignment method – until fairly recently at least. I'm told we copied it from our early contact with the Sith."

Jansa's face took on a musing look and she tilted her head to one side. "Let's see . . .."

A couple of seconds later and the datapad displayed a star system.

It wasn't anywhere that Bastila was immediately familiar with. Jansa and Velta Laska seemed similarly nonplussed. It felt ever so slightly anticlimactic.

Canderous didn't share their reaction. "Shaft me sideways with a Baragwin repeater," he muttered as he crowded in behind them. "So Organa was right about Hoth being a decoy."

At the looks directed his way, he leant forward and tapped the datapad's screen impatiently. "Daragba. Revan set up a sizable Republic base there during the Mandalorian War. Force knows why. It's the ass end of nowhere, and of precisely zero strategic value – at least until he stuck his troops there. We tried and failed to obliterate it, sure that it must have been some kind of brilliant stratagem. The bastard was like that – made you search for deep, hidden meanings when all he was doing was picking his nose."

Bastila didn't like the sound of that at all, but the fact was it fit. Indeed, given the vision, it made perfect sense. Sort of. Of course, the key question of what Revan had gone to Daragba to discover remained unanswered. She couldn't see one thing though. "Apologies if I'm missing something, but how exactly does this confirm Organa's suspicions?"

"Zoom out a bit and look at its position. It's three sectors over from Hoth. You can bet that if Republic command tries to retake Hoth and reinforce along the trade spine, this is one of the places they'll draw the ships and troops from."

_Opening Daragba up to attack itself . . ._

Her thoughts were interrupted as a voice spoke from behind them, smooth and courteous. "Oh, very well done, all of you." Half-mocking applause echoed through the chamber. "I believe it took my Lord Malefic in the region of three hours to figure all that out."

Everybody turned around, reaching for their weapons.

-s-s-

Yuthura sat cross-legged in the shadow of a boulder near the summit of a low hill and waited. She was alone, no sign of anyone at all in the vicinity.

Night had closed in fully several hours ago. This world had no moon, so it was very dark despite the clear sky. She could feel herself shivering constantly, and if she stopped clenching her teeth so tightly, she knew that they would chatter. Her head tails were drawn in close to her skull, wrapping together under her chin.

Although in many respects hardier than humans – able to go much longer without water, and, with their multiple stomachs, easily capable of digesting and extracting nutrition from sources that a human would find inedible or even outright poisonous – Twi'leks were not well adapted to the cold. The complete lack of body hair didn't much help for starters, and the additional surface area of exposed skin her lekku gave to lose heat through was an aggravating factor.

At least the boulder sheltered her somewhat from the bitter wind. She glanced down at the chronometer around her wrist, which also displayed the current temperature. A few degrees below freezing.

She sneered at herself. _Pathetic. What would you be like on Hoth or Arkania?_

Part of her was still halfway inclined to light a fire – it would hardly draw more attention to her than she was already doing deliberately – but she stayed herself. If the Sith saw she was waiting for them in advance they'd be that much better prepared, and her chances of doing what she needed would be that much lower.

_Lower then zero?_

She ignored the cynical inner voice. Instead she made herself concentrate harder on what she was doing, sending tiny probing feelers of Force out towards the Sith lines, just significant enough that she was sure they would be noticed, but not so obvious that it would look too blatant. She rubbed her hands together and wiggled her toes inside her boots to keep circulation up. Being half numb when they caught-up to her wasn't going to help.

Tamar's plan for them to try to go north until they were outside the jaws of the Sith trap had failed abysmally. The terrain had simply been too rough and mazy for them to make good enough time, and a blind turn up a dead end gorge, forcing nearly half an hour of backtracking, had killed their chances stone dead.

It was then that she'd made her decision.

Marshall had, of course, argued the toss, blatantly accusing her of taking the first available opportunity to betray them and run back to her old masters. With neither the time, nor the inclination to debate the matter, she'd simply reached into his head and forcibly persuaded him to see things her way.

As a Sith, she wouldn't have thought twice about doing such a thing, so maybe the guilt she'd felt over it meant she'd changed more than she sometimes thought. Although obviously not so much as to stop herself doing it entirely.

The fact that the action would draw the Sith even more certainly to their location had, at that point, actually become an advantage. By the time Marshall came to his senses again a few minutes later, the die was already irrevocably cast.

It felt like she'd been here for hours now. During that time, she'd questioned her own motives extensively, but still hadn't managed to dissuade herself from this path.

In the end, it came down to a starkly brutal choice. Either all of them could be captured and – almost certainly – killed by the Sith, and the data core they'd gone to all that trouble stealing would be lost, content unknown. Or she could try to lure the Sith away from the others, giving them a chance – however small – at escaping.

It felt like a stupid plan. Cretinous. And when it came down to it, she was scared. She knew well enough what was going to happen if the Sith captured her.

_So just make sure you're not captured, hey?_

_Yeah, easy enough, that_. The shudder that passed through her this time had nothing to do with the cold. She could only come up with one way to avoid capture, and it didn't exactly fill her with joy.

For the first time in a long, long time, she'd allowed herself to start making attachments to other people. For the first time in a long time, she'd allowed herself to have things that she truly feared losing.

In the end though, paradoxically, that had made the decision easier rather than more difficult.

Yuthura made a hissing noise through her teeth. If she was going to do this, she had to focus, and fight purely and simply to win. No doubt. No distraction. No regrets.

She sensed the Sith forces reach the start of the gully that would lead them the last half mile, straight to her position. Standing up, she stretched, working the stiffness from her limbs. The cold suddenly felt a very distant and trivial thing. One hand went to a pocket, clutching the small remote control device it contained. The other grasped the hilt of her lightsaber, though she didn't ignite it. No sense in making herself too easy a target.

Her heart tripped over rapidly and she could feel sweat forming on her brow, though the cold wind dried it instantly. She stared down towards the gully, counting the seconds.

_Sorry Tamar, I wish that . . ._

Sighing to herself, she let thought die away half formed. He would either understand, or he wouldn't.

_Now. _She pressed a button on the remote.

A fraction of a second later came the sound of six small, and from this distance rather weedy, detonations. She heard panicked shouts. Through the Force, she sensed pain, several lives extinguishing in a flash. Felt through the Force, the loss of a Sith life was exactly the same as the loss of any other life.

Gritting her teeth, she forced away pity.

Several blaster bolts, fired in panic, lit up the sky. A moment later there was a sharp cracking noise, followed by a dull rumbling as a portion of the rock face collapsed, sending a miniature avalanche cascading down into the gully, right in the middle of the Sith force and effectively cutting it in two. More screams and shouts of panic rang out.

That was . . . unexpected. The explosions had been mainly intended to confuse and distract; to slow. By luck – by the will of the Force perhaps – she'd managed to pick a weak spot.

For a moment, she pondered whether to run. Perhaps that was enough to buy her the time she'd sought to gain.

But then she felt _them_ coming. The dog pack. There were eight of them, closing fast, filled with dark power and furious rage as the charged ahead of their troops, baying for the kill.

That drew a savage, scary smile. Normally they travelled in packs of four, one to a legion. Which meant her efforts had drawn an extra pack – away from Tamar; away from the others.

They reached the bottom of the hill, lightsabers igniting, harshly glowing red beacons in the darkness. She watched them as they spread out around the base of the hill, seeking to cut off any route of escape.

"You cannot run from us, Revan." The voice was harsh, almost guttural. "And you cannot fight us all. Surrender, and maybe we will show mercy. Save yourself some pain . . ."

Yuthura snorted to herself, blocking out the words. But if they thought she was Tamar, then all to the good.

One of the Dark Jedi near the speaker started to edge up the slope. There was a brilliant flash of light and a resounding bang as he trod on one of the frag mines she'd concealed in the scree. He was thrown backwards, at least twenty feet through the air, one of his legs torn off at the knee. By the time he slammed, broken and twisted, into the ground, he was dead.

The leader trailed off, gaping. She sensed the others' momentary shock and disarray.

Before they could recover, she moved. A single Force jump sent her flying down the slope, straight towards the leader. She didn't ignite her lightsaber until the last possible instant, and he didn't become aware of her until much, much too late. As he desperately attempted to adjust his guard, she sliced unerringly through his neck.

His head bounced away from his body, which appeared to take several seconds to realise it was dead, finally slumping gracelessly forward in ridiculous slow motion.

As she landed, she snapped the lightsaber off again immediately. Taking a frag grenade from her belt, she rolled it, bouncing and clattering, towards one of the others.

The noise meant he was able to evade it, but when the grenade went off, the brilliant flash it caused destroyed the night vision of all those who where looking in that direction – which was everyone except Yuthura and a couple of Dark Jedi around the other side of the hill.

Taking advantage, she sent forth distracting waves of fear and confusion through the Force, spinning away from her position – a lithe and deadly ghost in the darkness. A short bladed vibro-knife came to hand from a sheath in the top of one of her boots as she darted behind another of them – a woman this time. Yuthura opened up her throat, already gone again by the time she collapsed, gurgling horribly.

Three down in seconds. She felt a kind of grim, icy calm.

The fourth was slightly more alert, spinning and raising an arm across his throat as she came up behind him. Her vibro-knife pierced his forearm, wedging tight between radius and ulna, and getting yanked from her grasp.

He reeled back, swinging at her clumsily with his lightsaber. Although not much of a threat in itself, it did force her to ignite her own lightsaber again, giving away her position and relinquishing the main advantage she'd gained in a single stroke.

Another of the Sith – a huge, heavily scarred and tattooed Zabrak – decided not to waste time with niceties and filled the air around the two combatants with a storm of crackling Force lightning. His supposed colleague took the blunt of the blast as Yuthura rolled agilely away. He collapsed in a charred and smoking heap.

Then, teeth bared, the Zabrak charged at her like a marauding bull Reek, twin red lightsaber blades flashing.

She parried adroitly as she came to her feet again, her movements a graceful and deadly dance. She was forced to fall back before the Zabrak's superior reach and strength though, all too aware that she couldn't afford to be drawn into a lengthy duel, with the three remaining Sith closing on them fast.

His momentum and fury gave her no room to even counterattack, and her arms began to ache with each parry she made to his brutally powerful thrusts. Coolly –calmly – she reached past him with her mind, gasping hold of a loose rock and yanking it down the slope.

It landed directly on top of another of the mines she'd laid.

The Zabrak reacted instinctively to the explosion, while she was fully expecting it. As his defences wavered, she skewered him precisely through the chest. The look in his eyes was almost bemused as he abruptly found he didn't have the strength to lift his limbs any more. Then he fell, face down in the dirt.

The seconds she'd lost proved costly though.

As she tried to Force jump back up the slope to buy herself time and put herself back on firmer footing, a Force wave slammed into her, knocking her flying. She slammed into the ground hard enough to blast all the breath from her lungs. Too winded to stop herself, she tumbled and bounced back down the side of the hill, before finally crashing to a halt.

Sharp pain flared in her right arm and, at some point in her fall, she'd lost her lightsaber. It lay almost thirty feet away, still glowing brilliant purple.

Grimly, battered and abraded, she hauled herself upright. Immediately, before she could even begin to brace herself, another Force wave slammed into her, knocking her violently back down like a giant, pummelling fist. Dimly she was aware of the three Sith closing in, though the brilliant red of their lightsabers was the only thing she could make out of them. A third wave pummelled her; a fourth; a fifth, ripping all trace of her defences apart.

Like a broken rag doll, she bounced against a boulder bigger than she was, feeling sharp, agonising pain as her ribs cracked.

When the sixth wave hit, consciousness finally faded entirely.

-s-s-

"Interesting, don't you think?" The figure, at the moment nothing more than a gaunt silhouette, made a waving gesture. Immediately Bastila sensed a massive flow of darkside Force energy, not just from him but from the entire temple around them too – a titanic black tidal wave.

It crashed over them, slicing through her hasty attempts at constructing a defence as if it wasn't there. She found herself unable to move, or act in any other way, glued motionless to the spot. From the small amount she could see in the periphery of her vision, it appeared that everyone else around her was similarly afflicted.

It wasn't like being caught in a stasis field – that had a hard, brittle sense to it, as if the air around you had turned into a casing of glass. Instead, it felt more like her brain had been suddenly and thoroughly disconnected from her body, none of the commands she was trying to send to it getting through. Oddly, it wasn't in any sense frightening. Indeed, she felt almost relaxed, liberated of the need to take any action or make any decision. In fact, it was somehow . . . pleasant.

Part of her recognised that the lethargy and inertia were all part of what had been done to her, but despite that, it was very difficult to rouse herself, or make herself care.

"They say that Bailor Dromund created this chamber without ever setting foot on the planet it points the way to, guided by the Force as he sought out the means to destroy Marka Ragnos. I have to confess, I find all this ancient Sith history fascinating."

The figure stepped forward, out of the shadows. Something deep inside Bastila flinched, though it didn't come close to reaching the surface.

He resembled the dark reflection she had fought – grey and greasy, veins showing like a web of black corruption just beneath the surface of his skin. In him though, the decay had gone much further than it had in her double. It almost looked as if his flesh had started to wither away, his frame unnaturally gaunt with every tendon showing starkly. His hair was no more than a few wispy, colourless strands clinging to his naked scalp. Crusted yellow eyes shone with a deeply unhealthy gleam in the half-light.

The scariest thing though, was that there were still a few traces about him that indicated he was a young man – probably not much older than she was.

The disfiguring effects of the darkside were hardly an unknown phenomenon. What wasn't known, however, was what triggered it. It certainly didn't seem to afflict all, or even most, of those who embraced the darkside. It didn't seem to be tied to how powerful, or far into the darkness a person had progressed. Neither Revan nor Malak had ever shown any sign of that kind of disfiguration, for example, and they'd both been Dark Lords of the Sith – supposedly as black as they came. Exar Kun was supposed to have remained hale and vigorous right until the bitter and bloody last. And as with this case, it didn't even seem to be contingent on age.

Perhaps it was like a form of cancer, she thought as she looked at his grey, hollow-cheeked face. Like how some people could smoke twenty death-sticks a day their entire life and still live until they were ninety, while others would be struck down with lung tumours before they the age of thirty.

Or perhaps it was something far more fundamental than that.

"Dromund Kaas. The House of Dromund." The smooth, almost silken tones of his voice were distinctly creepy, originating as they did from such a rotten and tainted looking source. "Not many are given the honour of an entire world named after them."

He walked past Bastila, out of her field of view. She caught a whiff of something sickly sweet hanging in the air around him, lingering unpleasantly in her nostrils.

"It's surprising how few have heard of Bailor Dromund these days." The voice took on a musing tone. "Or maybe not. Nobody, especially the Sith, remembers a loser. Once he was grand enough that he challenged the great and storied Marka Ragnos for rulership of the entire Sith empire, you know? He was defeated of course, but he escaped with his life, fleeing to this world in exile with those followers still loyal to him. This structure around us is the place he first landed. The first temple. All the others are but pale copies, made by Dromund's followers after his death. Of course, the swamp swallowed all _them_ long ago, just like it swallows everything." A brief, considering pause. "Except for their guard dogs, but even they are something different now . . ."

Finally, he trailed off. Bastila listened to the sound of his footsteps close behind her. She couldn't so much as turn her head.

"One thing has always intrigued me. Was it the nature of this place that sent Dromund mad, or was it Dromund's madness that caused this place to become as it is today?" Another pause. He stopped directly behind her. His breath, close to the back of her neck, bore a faint wheezing note. "I suppose it matters not. One thing I do know is that Dromund was terrified that Ragnos would track him down and kill him – utterly obsessed by the notion. He spent all his last years in preparation, building his strength for a battle that never came.

"This place is his fortress. It acts as a sink of dark Force energy. You can feel it, can't you?" These words seemed to be aimed directly at her, the voice dropping conspiratorially. "It flows through the walls. He sacrificed scores of his followers in dark rituals, capturing their tortured essences and binding them to the statues that line the hallways and dot the surrounding swamp. Eternal sentinels and guards, and – if necessary – dark batteries from which he could draw strength. No, my dear, that wasn't just your imagination. And of course, you've all felt the disruption field yourselves. That's nothing mechanical – a simply miraculous feat . . .."

Again, he trailed off. He walked back round in front of her again. "But where are my manners? I do go on, don't I?" A mock sigh. "Please accept my apologies, but it seems so long since I had anyone to talk to. Perhaps we could take our conversation to less cramped and uncomfortable confines? Yes, I think we should."

With that he turned away, walking briskly back down the passageway. He raised a hand, snapping his fingers. Bastila found herself walking after him, despite having made no conscious effort to do so. It felt like her body no longer belonged to her, and she couldn't make her mind focus sufficiently to even begin to challenge it. The others followed along behind like a regiment of toy soldiers, all lined in formation.

They stopped again as soon as the reached the chamber with the sacrifice pit.

"There, isn't that better?" As Bastila breathed in and out, the foetor of decay was almost overpowering.

He stepped close to her again. "I must say, it's quite an honour to be in the presence of so famous a personage as Bastila Shan." He smiled. His teeth looked as grey as his skin, the surrounding gums almost black. "And but for a quirk of fate I suppose I might be calling you master now. Tell me, Lady Shan, how did you like the little surprise I prepared for you out in the swamp? I was quite impressed by the way you overcame it."

He tilted his head to one side, apparently waiting with interest for an answer. She couldn't so much as move her lips though. After about a minute of lingering silence a flicker of what looked liked annoyance passed across his face, though it turned quickly into a chuckle. He waved his hand across her face like a magician performing a conjuring trick. "Apologies. How absent-minded of me. You may speak now."

She cleared her throat. "I suppose, in a way, I should probably thank you."

He blinked, seemingly caught by surprise by her response. "Oh? I hadn't expected you to be quite so . . . magnanimous."

"It helped show me how pathetic I was being."

"Hmm." Bastila could tell he wasn't entirely pleased by her response, and he drew back from her a fraction. "You don't recognise me. Do you?"

"Should I?" She recalled his earlier comment about calling her master. "I suppose you were one of Malak's pets on the Star Forge." As Bastila spoke, she found that some of the lethargy that had gripped her earlier had faded. She strained with every ounce of willpower she had to make her body move, but she didn't manage so much as a finger twitch.

His response was a low chuckle. "I guess I've changed a bit since you last saw me. I don't quite have the same handsome good looks as then, and anyway, you would only have been fifteen."

She stared at him, struggling to see anything remotely familiar in his blasted visage.

"Don't you remember? Because I remember you very well. You slapped me when I tried to kiss you. Does that help ring any bells?"

Bastila felt the blood drain from her face. Briefly, another face superimposed itself over the cadaverous ruin in front of her – brash, bronzed and beautiful, framed by flowing blonde hair. Despite all the massive differences, the underlying bone structure seemed to match. "D-Derren?"

He smiled with a glee that looked strangely childlike. "At your service. I have to say the years have been kinder to you than they have to me . . ."

She wasn't really listening. She was just staring at him in a kind of shell-shocked semi-daze.

Derren Horvath had been a couple of years older than her, a seventeen year old Padawan when he'd followed Revan and Malak in disobeying the will of the Council by joining the fight against the Mandalorians – charming and with the cocky arrogance of someone who still deep down believes they are going to live forever. She remembered the face-slap incident all too clearly.

". . . Of course, it was all for a bet. A kiss from the perfect little ice princess." He smiled again, and scratched the tip of his nose. "I didn't really mind losing the bet, you know? Because I knew that you didn't slap me because you didn't want to be kissed. You slapped me precisely because you did want me to kiss you. You slapped me for puncturing that feelingless façade, and making you a little less the perfect Jedi."

"Looking at you now it seems I made a very good choice."

He snorted, but didn't really seem annoyed. "A choice not to feel, or live, or be a real person. The Jedi are afraid of real people – too complex, too unpredictable, too difficult to control and full of icky and chaotic emotions. What they want is drones; feelingless automata to unquestioningly serve their definition of duty and the so-called _will of the Force_. But we aren't meant to be like that. In time our 'imperfections' show through and we 'fall', or to be more accurate, we escape from their crushing tyranny of the spirit." A slow shake of his head. "Quite the number they did on you though, Bastila. Even after tasting freedom you still go crawling back."

"And you think what you've found is better somehow? When did you last look at yourself in the mirror?"

He smirked. "About the same time you did, I believe." He leant in close again. "You know, I think I'll take that kiss I didn't get before, for old times sake. I think you're going to struggle to slap me this time."

She couldn't flinch away, despite her desire to. His breath was hot on her face, sickly sweet attar of decay. She could practically taste the corruption on it, as if he was slowly rotting from the inside out. Ever so lightly, his lips brushed across hers . . .

And to her surprise he drew back, a strange flicker of something she didn't recognise showing in his dirty yellow eyes. "It's not as if there's anyone left to collect from on that bet anyway," he murmured. "I watched Sedona being pulverised by a Basilisk war droid. And I cut Ferris down myself." A smile, which she thought looked almost pained. "My final exam to gain entrance to the Sith ranks."

Bastila just stared at him, utterly silent.

"Strange how things turn out, isn't it? Six years ago neither of us would ever have foreseen anything remotely like this."

"It doesn't have to . . ."

Before she could finish, he whirled abruptly away from her. "Oh, stop fidgeting Mandalorian!" His voice was inhumanly loud, weirdly distorted and seeming to originate from more than just a single throat. Bastila saw him gesture – felt the dark Force flowing through the temple walls coil and gather at his command, before exploding through his body in a black wave.

She heard Canderous groan, followed by a crunching impact. A moment later and the groan turned into a startled exhalation. That was followed almost immediately by a dull, wet thud. Bastila wasn't able to turn her neck to see what had happened, but then, she didn't really need to.

Derren – it was still difficult to think of him as such – had pushed Canderous down the pit with the rest of the corpses.

He turned back to face her, slow and watchful. She could still sense the Force he'd drawn from the temple swirling around him in a vortex of vile, corrupting energy. His eyes seemed almost to shine with it. Whatever brief moment there had been between them – whatever tiny glimpse of humanity he'd let slip – was gone, locked deep away.

"Now, where were we?"

-s-s-

"They're turning back," Chinn murmured. "Withdrawing maybe."

After a short pause, he handed the nightvision binoculars across to Tamar. Tamar watched the scene grimly.

The best part of a kilometre away, he could see the top of the Sith assault walker that had been closing in on their position inexorably. It had turned through 180 degrees, and was retreating back down the shallow valley it had been advancing along. As he continued to watch, he caught glimpses of Sith troopers, scurrying like shiny, armour-plated ants in its shadow, also now apparently retreating.

Except they weren't.

The urgent freneticism of their movements suggested they weren't simply withdrawing from the field, the Republic fleet arriving to the rescue just in the nick of time. Instead, they reminded him of a hunting pack that had suddenly caught the scent of blood.

Something inside him tensed up. _Yuthura_.

He lowered the binoculars staring off at nothing.

What he felt was close to physical pain, and he struggled briefly to control his breathing. Breaking radio silence to issue a warning would only allow the Sith to zero in on her position all the more surely, as well as giving themselves away into the bargain. Trying to contact her via the Force was liable to have exactly the same effect.

Briefly he considered trying to create some kind of diversion or distraction, to draw the Sith back towards them. His instincts as a soldier reluctantly overrode his attempted rationalisations for this though. He had a care of duty to see all those with him safe. Risking himself was one thing. Risking all of them was entirely something else.

And he was only guessing. He told himself it was only a guess.

Finally, he turned away. His voice, when he spoke, was harsh, his knuckles clenched white around the binoculars. "Let's get moving. We're not out of this yet."

-s-s-

"This is purely idiotic. You're behaving like the villain in a bad holo-novel."

Consciousness returned slowly and painfully for Yuthura. The voice, from somewhere close by, scraped across her nerve endings like the jagged edges of a broken glass. Her head throbbed. Every indrawn breath caused pain to stab viciously through her side as her cracked ribs shifted. The tightness in her chest made it feel as if a heavy weight was pressing down on her.

"You're questioning my authority, Seldach?" The answering voice was female. It was familiar to Yuthura, but she couldn't immediately place it in this context.

Her arms were pulled up, above her head. The right one was a mass of dull, throbbing pain. As she cautiously tried to shift her position that pain flared sharply to life, and she had to bite down hard to stop herself from crying out. Broken she concluded, snapped along the same fracture that Tamar had inadvertently inflicted on Coruscant. Also manacled, tight and unyielding metal bonds cold around her wrists.

Despite the fact that she must have flinched, no one immediately called out that she was awake, as she half expected.

"She should be back with the fleet, inside an interrogation cell!" The first, grating voice again. "We have neither the proper equipment to restrain her, nor the expertise to interrogate her."

"Speak for yourself," the oh so familiar female voice purred. Not being able to place it was akin to a maddening itch between her shoulder blades. "I assure you that I have all the skills necessary to extract exactly what _I_ need."

"Stop letting delusions of grandeur go to your head, Lashowe." A tiny, convulsive shiver passed up the length of Yuthura's body. She was lying on something that felt a lot like rough, unyielding rock, tilted at an angle of about thirty degrees. So _that_ was why the voice was familiar. "You're only in charge because she killed both Nagara and Vogun. You're so far out of your depth here it isn't even funny."

"He shouldn't speak to you like that." The words belonged to a third-party, heavy and ponderous. "You want me to make him stop?"

"Oh, don't worry yourself, Tregan. I can deal with this worm." Although Yuthura couldn't see it, she could picture the expression on Lashowe's blandly beautiful face well enough. That cruel, too avid smile; the glint of cunning that wasn't nearly as clever or surreptitious as it liked to think. "He's about to leave us in peace. Aren't you Seldach?"

Yuthura heard a hissing, indrawn breath and risked opening her eyes a fraction. Instead of a detention block, she appeared to be in some kind of cave, presumably not too far from where she'd been captured. Portable electric lights illuminated a trio of dark silhouettes about twenty feet away, although she was still surrounded by darkness.

"This violates procedure totally. Stop being such an . . ."

"Procedure?" Lashowe's voice was sneering as it cut Seldach off. Attempting to keep her breathing shallow, and consequently less painful, Yuthura tried testing her bonds again by pulling on them with her unbroken left arm. They held tight, having no more than a couple of inches of give in them. She couldn't strain her neck enough to actually see them. "Listen to yourself. We are Sith. We aren't bound by such petty . . ."

"Explain that to Lord Auza."

Very, very cautiously, Yuthura began to reach above her head with her mind, probing at the manacles, and the chains they connected to, with the tiniest, most surreptitious touches of the Force.

Lashowe snorted. "We were ordered to find Revan, remember? We have, at most, 24 hours to do so. Then Republic reinforcements arrive from Cybloc and chase us off. Any useful information we can extract from her therefore has, at best, a 24-hour lifespan. And you want to waste that time by slavishly following procedure? Do you want to be the one to stand before Lord Auza and explain how we let Revan slip through our grasp because we failed to show the slightest hint of initiative?"

The locking mechanism of the manacles was electronic; perhaps come sort of code sequence. Yuthura quickly determined that she wasn't going to be able to spring them using the Force. _Of course not_.

She took a deep breath, struggling to retain her calm and stay focused on this one immediate problem. _So maybe . . .._ As rapidly as she could without drawing immediate attention to herself, she began to manipulate the Force into making the spot where the manacles connected to the chains oxidise at a far faster rate than normal.

"Well, do you Seldach? Because if you do, you're going to end up just like she is. A mind-wiped slave wearing an explosive collar. Act like a slave. Be one."

Seldach didn't deign to respond. Instead, he whirled on heel and stalked out of there.

"Follow him," Lashowe, snapped peremptorily at Tregan. "Keep an eye on what he's up."

When he too was gone, she turned and started to walk towards Yuthura. Yuthura let her grip on the Force dissipate.

For a time Lashowe simply walked slowly around her, saying nothing. The only thing Yuthura could hear was the soft, steady sound of her footsteps, round and round. _Build anticipation. The anticipation of pain breaks a person far more surely than pain itself_. That had been Uthar Wynn. _Keep the prisoner off balance, and be unpredictable. Routine, however awful, is survivable. Chaos and constant uncertainty are not._

She knew all about Sith interrogation methods very well indeed. In a strange way, the part of her that was still managing to remain calm found it interesting to view them from the other end.

The footsteps came to a halt. Lashowe had always shown an aptitude – and even enthusiasm – in this particular field. "To think there was a time I used to be afraid of you."

Yuthura said nothing. Lashowe leant in close, grabbing hold of her chin, gloved fingers digging painfully into her jaw as she tilted it back. "Now I see how powerless and pathetic you truly are."

Something about Lashowe's attitude suggested to Yuthura that she was still trying to convince herself of that fact, though. She simply returned Lashowe's gaze impassively. Lashowe responded by backhanding her hard across the face, snapping her head violently to one side.

Abruptly she felt buzzing mental probes assailing her, swarming like angry flies as they attempted to find some kind of gap in her mental defences that they could exploit. She held them off. If there was one area of the Force she had become truly proficient at as a Sith, it was protecting her mind against outside interference, and compared to some, Lashowe was strictly an amateur.

The probes died away.

Yuthura swallowed, lubricating her throat so that when she tried to speak it would come out as something more authoritative than a croak. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, her lips already swelling from the blow she'd received. "Just so we're clear – and you don't waste your time unnecessarily – I have no knowledge of Revan's whereabouts. I'm sure you're going to spend your time torturing me anyway, but I thought it would only be polite to establish the futility of it up front."

Another backhanded blow left her head spinning. Lashowe leant in close, her eyes seeming to glitter. "You lie. We sensed at least two Jedi in the vicinity, of a strength that is hardly ordinary."

Yuthura gave her a patient look. "Firstly, I'm not a Jedi." Which was true enough. "And secondly, the other Force user you sensed is Jolee Bindo." Which, even by the loosest interpretation of truth possible, wasn't.

The third backhanded slap surprised her somewhat by not arriving.

"Truly transparent." Lashowe sneered, although the sudden doubt was clear. "We know that Revan was on board that frigate. Only two Force users of any strength were detected on the surface of this world. You are one, therefore Revan is the other."

Yuthura sighed impatiently. "It's no wonder the Sith are losing this war, is it? For all we accuse the Jedi of being hidebound, we're just as bad. There were at least six Force users on the frigate, including myself. I was separated from Revan on board. He made it to an operational docking bay in time and took a spaceship. I did not. He could have reached anywhere within several hundred light years of this point by now. All I do know is that this is the one place in the galaxy where he definitively is not."

It was a punch to her torso this time. The pain from her cracked ribs almost made her black out. Her mouth worked goldfish-like as she struggled to drag breath back into her lungs. It felt like a rusty saw blade was being dragged through her side as her chest heaved.

"Well, like you so perceptively said, I'm going to spend my time torturing you anyway." Lashowe smiled unpleasantly. "And oh yes, I will enjoy it. Perhaps during that time you'll come up with an alternative story to amuse me with?" She drew a vibro-knife from the belt of her grey and black robes. As she switched it on, its edge became a blur. Holding it up and tilting it, its blade caught the light, flashing brilliantly.

Yuthura finally managed to draw enough breath to speak. "I'm sorry."

Lashowe stopped short. "Sorry?"

_Sorry for helping turn you into this, for all you sought it out with such fervour._ She didn't say that though.

"What are you sorry for?" More insistent this time, and she could feel the edge of furious anger within her – dark and flickering traceries of Force hanging on the air around her, ready to lash out.

"Sorry that you're going to be dead, within five years at the outside."

"And you're going to be begging for death in five minutes at the outside. But you're not going to get it. Once you're too broken to be of further use, my lord Auza has a pretty collar lined up for you to wear." The vibro-knife hovered about an inch from Yuthura's cheek, a distracting blur in the corner of her eye.

"Still too ready to trust in the flattery of others," Yuthura continued, knowing that she was playing a very dangerous game indeed. "Ruled by your vanities and insecurities, needing to be worshipped and adored. Those other two – the ones supposedly under your command. Already they manipulate you so easily between them."

Lashowe snorted contemptuously. "Seldach is an idiot, too timid and staid to be a proper Sith . . ."

"But it's his friend, Tregan, who's the dangerous one. The one who's got you fooled."

Lashowe blinked. She covered her surprise quickly. _But not quickly enough for someone swimming in these firaxa shark infested waters_. _Five years, if you're very, very lucky. _Yuthura's thoughts were tinged with sadness. "I have Tregan wrapped around my little finger. He would do absolutely anything for me." A residue of doubt punctured her smirk though.

Yuthura gave her a pitying look. "You're an attractive woman. I doubt he finds it too much of a hardship to keep the pretence of servitude up, given the . . . rewards. For now at least. And he has Seldach to draw your suspicions and paranoia away from him. He can't really be as stupid as he seems and still have made it through a Sith apprenticeship, can he?"

"Shut up!" Lashowe grasped one of Yuthura's head tails tightly, twisting it and yanking it down hard.

The pain was excruciating and it was a struggle to prevent herself from crying out. She gritted her teeth and tried to take some small comfort that her words had found their intended target. If she lived long enough to be able to exploit that.

The flickering edge of the vibro-blade touched her cheek, cutting shallowly but not enough to impart more than a light stinging sensation. "I've heard that a Twi'lek's lekku are very important; that they have more blood vessels and nerve-endings than almost any other part of your body, and can give both great pleasure . . ." Lashowe stroked the head tail she still gripped crudely. "Or great pain." Her grip tightened, vice-like. "I've even heard it said that a Twi'lek's deepest and most basic memories are stored within their cells. Is that true?"

The grip relented slightly. Yuthura met Lashowe's gaze wordlessly, able to feel a droplet of blood sliding down her face like a hot tear from the cut on her cheek.

The knife moved away from her cheek, out of her field of view. "If you beg for me prettily enough, I might leave you one of them instead of amputating both."

Yuthura felt the tip of Lashowe's knife touch halfway along the lekku she was still holding, no more firmly than it had touched her cheek. But where she had scarcely felt anything before, here it burned like a drop of molten steel spilt on her skin. She struggled not to flinch; to twist away; to thrash. Called on all the pain suppression and calming techniques she knew. _Serenity . . ._

Except she remembered Seela Vek, lying in a broken heap on the floor of her cell, sobbing endlessly, her sanity gone with her lekku – a woman who had survived months of Omeesh's abuses, shattered irrevocably in an instant by one casual act of mutilation. It was an image that would haunt her always, and for all the physical and mental abuses she had endured in her past, it left a part of her terrified. To be so utterly broken in a way that it was impossible to resist . . .

Her jaw clamped tight. Let a single crack show in your defences and the Sith had ways of widening it into an abyss. Pretending to beg might not seem much, but if you begged once, you would be made to beg again. And again. And again. And each time you would end up relinquishing a little more ground to your interrogator, until there was no ground left.

As the silence lengthened, the pressure of the knife-blade increased and it cut deeper, penetrating the tough layers of muscle fibre, blood welling up copiously. Yuthura could feel sweat pouring off her as she struggled not to scream.

Someone walked into the cave. Yuthura didn't hear their approach until they were nearly on top of them.

"Lady Lashowe, my apologies for . . .

Lashowe whirled away. The abrupt cessation of pain left Yuthura gasping. "What is it, you imbecile? Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Admiral Gredthe, my lady. Asking for . . . for you. If it wasn't important I wouldn't have . . ."

As they left her alone again, Yuthura took a deep breath as she tried to suppress her shaking, and resumed surreptitiously channelling whisper fine threads of Force to weaken her bonds.

-s-s-

"So, nowadays you're a lackey for Darth Malefic are you?" Bastila struggled to keep the desperation out of her voice.

Derren Horvath stopped and looked around slowly. In front of him, arranged like waxwork combatants, two of the Republic commandos – Tasker and Antilles – stood motionless, apparently poised to plunge their vibro-swords through each other's torsos. She could see sweat pouring down the side of Antilles' face, his eyes bulging wildly.

"Didn't I stop you speaking?" There was vague irritation in his voice. "Obviously not, it seems. How very . . . absentminded of me." He smiled slightly as he looked at her. "Hardly a lackey, my dear. For the moment my orders are to follow the Great Lord Malefic."

"Your orders?"

Internally her thoughts were not on the conversation, instead occupied with trying to locate the strange inner voice she'd experienced several times before. _Zikl, it's you, isn't it?_ Part of her was annoyed at taking so long to work that out. _I . . . I need your help_.

There was no response, as there had been no response out in the swamp.

Derren sighed and shook his head. "Unimaginatively tedious as the man unfortunately is. I mean really, even his schemes of conquest are second hand, based on vague misunderstandings of Darth Revan's old goals. It's almost pitiable." His eyes refocused from whatever distant place they'd drifted off too. "But such are my true master's wishes, and for now one obeys."

"Your true master? You mean Darth Auza then." She was well aware of the civil war going on for control of the Sith, and the two main factions in it.

_Zikl, I know you're in there! Please!_ It was like shouting into a vast, empty, echoing vault, and inwardly she felt cold. Perhaps his silence meant that he had regained consciousness, the fragile connection between them gone. Or perhaps . . .

A contemptuous snort cut the grim thought off, half formed. "Oh, please, Bastila. Do me a little more credit than that. I follow the true Lord of the Sith – and I don't, of course, mean Revan."

Finally, a voice answered her, confused and lost and very, very weak. _I . . . I . . . Yes, Zikl. That sounds right. _A long pause. _Bastila?_

_Yes, Bastila_. Part of her was dismayed by how weak and confused the voice sounded, barely there at all. It didn't contain any hint of the confidence of before, steering her gently towards the right path. Something, she sensed, had changed drastically.

_It's difficult to cling on. I should be somewhere else now. It's pulling me. So difficult. I'm sorry . . . for letting you down._

_Letting me down?_

_The council put us together for a purpose, to help each other fulfil our potential. But I was too trapped within my timidity . . . And now I don't know if I have enough of anything left to be of any use . . ._

"And who is this true lord?" She tried to sound conversational, aware that she'd been silent for too long. Keeping two entirely separate conversations going concurrently was not a skill she'd had much chance to practice.

"A very dangerous and cunning creature." His teeth bared in a grin. "I have learned well at my Lord's hand."

_I have to find a way of breaking this paralysis_. It irked – and shamed – her that, while Canderous had almost managed to break free of the hold over him, she'd made absolutely no headway against it at all. That the Mandalorian could be so much more mentally disciplined than her . . .

_His attention is fully on keeping you trapped. He sees you as the threat, and keeps most of his attention focused purely on keeping you restrained. He underestimated Canderous, and didn't pay him enough mind. It is no weakness on your part_. Zikl sound slightly less ephemeral this time.

"Still just a lackey though," she managed to say aloud.

Derren spread his hands. "For now. We all need to be lackeys at times, even Sith. Soon though . . . I think I will have drawn enough power and knowledge from this place for that to change. Already I have absorbed nearly a dozen of the statue-bonded shadows into myself. When I've absorbed them all I will be ready to drain the power from the temple itself. And then . . ." He winked at her.

She stared at him in dull horror. "You've . . .?" The whole idea of touching that darkness, let alone embracing it voluntarily left her utterly aghast. "Can't you see what you're doing to yourself?"

He tilted his head to one side, temporarily resembling a gaunt and oversized black carrion bird in his shabby robes. His yellow eyes seemed briefly nonplussed. "One must make sacrifices," he murmured, almost to himself. Then, more firmly, "I am transcending the bounds of mere flesh."

"You told me yourself what happened to Bailor Dromund!" she snapped at him. "There'll always be that little bit more of it to 'absorb'; a bit more power to consume. Except you're not the one doing the absorbing and consuming, are you? Look at yourself. You're falling apart. Like Dromund, the only thing this place is going to bring you is madness and death."

"Oh, blah." He made a waving gesture. "You're still just the same tediously sanctimonious fifteen year old girl, blathering about the dangers of daring to live."

_How did you escape from the neural disrupter_? Zikl's voice asked her, dragging her thought back to the urgent matter in hand.

_You can see my memories?_ She felt heat – mixed indignation and embarrassment – flaring to her cheeks.

Derren, laughed, misinterpreting her reaction completely.

_I'm sorry, but it's difficult to avoid in here . . ._

_And not what we need to be discussing right now, _she interrupted, admonishing herself to focus. She thought about it a moment. _I escaped the neural disrupter because of Tamar's subconscious usage of the Force_. It had pierced through the disrupter-inflicted daze, and by grasping hold of it through their bond, she'd been able to forge her own connection to the Force.

_Then perhaps you can break this the same way_.

Derren had stopped laughing, and was now peering at her suspiciously. Bastila's mouth worked, fumbling for something to say to distract his attention. "You killed all those men in the pit didn't you?"

His gesture was dismissive. "They're Sith. Your enemy. You should be thanking me for saving you the effort. Except all life is sacred to the Jedi Order, blah-di-blah, blah. You never get tired of preaching the same old hypocritical tune?"

Her jaw clamped down on her retort. _The same way?_

"Besides, to be perfectly accurate I didn't kill them. They killed themselves."

"At your behest. Whatever they were, they followed you, and you betrayed them utterly."

_There are active Force flows all around you_. She clearly sensed the doubt from Zikl as he said this.

Derren sighed. "You know what Bastila? You really are an incredibly boring conversationalist. I know, you're only trying to distract me. Keep me talking. Buy a few more seconds, until some nonexistent miracle arrives to save you all, or maybe simply to live that short bit longer. But by the Force, you could at least try not be so interminably dull about it." He made a cutting gesture, and her jaw locked tight.

Unaccountably the accusation of being boring burned. _Focus, idiot, _she all but snarled at herself.

Zikl's meaning finally registered. Draw on the same dark Force energy Derren was. The idea filled her with stark dread. _I can't do that! I'm not strong enough . . . I . . ._

"So, well done, Bastila," Derren was saying. "You've brought these men an extra couple of minutes of life. I'm sure they're both eternally grateful." He gestured sharply.

The two Republic commandos plunged there vibro-blades deep into each other's chests.

-s-s-

Yuthura sensed their approach: Lashowe and one other – Tregan probably.

In trying to hurry the process of escaping from her bonds along, she'd drawn too deeply of the Force and given herself away. There was no going back now. No second chances, or explanations that would wash. She had perhaps thirty seconds.

She could tell that she'd severely weakened the chain connecting to the wrist manacles, the metal corroded to the same degree as if it had spent several hundred years exposed to inclement weather, brittle and worn. Not brittle enough though, especially with the handicap of a broken arm.

Gritting her teeth, she changed tack, attempting to draw the heat out of the metal, slowing the vibration of the air molecules around it to speed up the rapid temperature drop.

Their footsteps were clearly audible now, hurrying. Where it came into contact with her skin, the metal was so cold that it seemed to burn her flesh. Her breath came in short, hissing gasps from the effort.

Abruptly she fed the heat back into the metal, drawing as deeply of the Force as she was able. The chain connecting the manacles began to glow, first a dull cherry red, then harsh orange, and finally white.

The skin of Yuthura's wrists began to burn and blister. She screamed rawly, pain, effort and focus all in one. The footsteps broke into a run.

As she yanked on the bonds as firmly as she could, the stress on her broken arm almost made her pass out. Her vision swirled in angry patterns of red distortion.

The bonds shattered.

A pummelling wave of Force came crashing through the cave entrance, but Yuthura had already rolled to one side. Tregan came barrelling after it, lightsaber blazing angry red.

He was overeager. Yuthura sidestepped the big man's charge agilely, lashing out with the length of glowing chain still attached to her wrist.

It caught him around the throat. His scream choked off rapidly, his flesh sizzling. The smell of cooking meat filled the air, both hideous and at the same time repulsively mouth-watering.

Yanking back hard, she pulled Tregan over, then stamped down on his face. His lightsaber leapt up from the ground into her left hand, and she whirled to face Lashowe.

Lashowe's approach was much more measured than Tregan's. Her eyes were filled with hate, though no words were exchanged.

It was a short and uneven fight. Hampered by her ribs and forced to fight with her weaker left hand – and with even that weighed down by the length of chain – Yuthura was panting raggedly after the opening, probing exchanges, air burning like molten lead in her lungs. As their lightsabers clashed and locked together, Lashowe took advantage, kicking viciously through Yuthura's guard into her cracked ribs.

She reeled back, blocking the next flurry of Lashowe's purely on instinct as she struggled desperately to keep going. Then the lightsaber was gone from her grasp, knocked flying as her defences twisted hopelessly awry.

A moment later she was flying back through the air, caught by a vicious whip-crack of Force lightning.

She lay on her back on the cave floor, scarcely able to move; scarcely conscious. Lashowe loomed over her. Her boot trod on her broken arm, grinding down sadistically.

Yuthura cried out, struggling to focus – struggling to think – through the pain. "I'd hoped you would put up a better fight," Lashowe was saying, seemingly from several hundred miles away through the roaring, rushing noise in Yuthura's ears. "This is hardly a victory for me to boast about . . .."

The words faded. Yuthura's gaze fixed upon something glinting in the gloom. The lightsaber that had fallen from her grasp. It had switched itself off, but . . .

"And so the pupil surpasses the teacher. Not that you were ever much of a teacher . . ." The heat of Lashowe's lightsaber blade against Yuthura's cheek made the pale-violet skin darken and blister.

_Snap-hiss_. Tregan's lightsaber ignited. Yuthura called it to her hand, and Lashowe whirled, eyes widening in surprise. Her blade raised instinctively _en guard_ . . .

And Tregan's saber sliced straight through her calf, just below the knee.

Lashowe made a soft, moaning noise and toppled over. Yuthura managed to roll out from beneath her as she fell, kicking her in the wrist as she landed and sending her lightsaber bouncing away.

It had all taken less than a second.

Lashowe lay on her back, eyes wide, hyperventilating as shock set in from the sudden loss of her leg. Snarling with the effort of trying to suppress the pain of her own injuries, cradling her broken arm against her chest, Yuthura walked across and trod down on the hilt of Lashowe's saber. Shutting off Tregan's weapon and slipping it through her belt, she bent down and picked it up. Insurance that she wasn't going to fall victim to the same kind of trick she'd just pulled.

"Please . . . please . . ."

As she stood over her, Yuthura could see Lashowe shivering violently. "Mercy?" she asked her softly.

Her eyes focused on Yuthura's face. Suddenly she looked very young indeed, vulnerable and frightened, all the conniving cruelty stripped away to leave someone who was barely more than a girl – a pretty, vain, deluded girl.

"I . . . I . . ." Her chest rose and fell so rapidly she could barely manage to speak.

"Want to live," Yuthura finished for her.

Cunning flickered briefly in Lashowe's eyes. "I can . . .."

"Shh!" Yuthura cut her off sharply, grimacing to herself. She knelt down at Lashowe's side, and after a moment's pause, started to channel healing Force in an effort to allay the worst effects of the shock.

Her thoughts were racing. She knew that she didn't have much time, and either Seldach or some of the Sith troops were bound to check up on the situation soon. Where they were in relation to the main body of Sith troops, she didn't know, though she suspected they would be some distance from the main encampment. Even Sith tended to finds the sounds of interrogation intrusive when they were trying to sleep. Right now though, she wouldn't have bet money on her ability to fight off a quadriplegic womp rat.

"There are other paths you can take, you know." Yuthura watched Lashowe's face and let out a breath. "But you're not really listening are you? You'll just nod agreement to anything that lets you live, and go straight back to being the way you were." She shifted her grip on Lashowe's lightsaber.

Fear flickered. "No, I . . ."

"I told you to shut up." There was a click of clashing teeth as Lashowe quickly closed her mouth, the rate of her breathing picking up again. "Just listen."

Yuthura's gaze darted briefly to the cave entrance, then back again. "I meant what I said about five years. It's less now. Chances are you won't survive the week if you stay a Sith. You might manage to pin this mess on Tregan if you're clever, but the problem is, you're just not that clever. You're going to have a very tough time, with Seldach especially." She looked down into Lashowe's panicked eyes, almost able to taste the surge of her fear. She hadn't even thought that far ahead. Part of her wanted to snap at her to get a grip.

"If I were you," Yuthura continued, "I'd find some place to hide until the Republic fleet show up. No one's going to know who you are, and at worst, you'll spend a period as a prisoner of war. I'd suggest going to the Jedi. They'd take you in if that's what you genuinely want, but . . . I suspect you don't have that in you. Not yet anyway. So do this purely for yourself. Make yourself a life, because right now you don't have one." She winced, standing up, then murmured, "And I _really_ don't need any more blood on my hands."

As she walked away, she sensed Lashowe's relief, and wondered briefly if anything that she'd said had even registered. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she was probably making a very big mistake.

But . . . it was a mistake she felt she had to make.

-s-s-

Bastila could feel Tasker and Antilles dying, impaled on each other's blades. It was horrific and darkly fascinating all at once.

Derren watched the two men avidly, black thunderclouds of tainted Force gathering close around him. He was like a vampire, drinking their deaths as ravenously as if it was hot blood – feeding too on the fear and sharp horror of those watching. His attention, for a second or so at least, was entirely occupied.

It was her chance. The one chance any of them were likely to get.

Yet she hesitated over it. She knew the tale of Ulic Quel-Droma, who had tried to use and master the power of the darkside for the purposes of the light, well enough. Every Padawan was taught about his fall, and the lessons to be drawn from it.

You did not master the darkside, no matter how strong and powerful you thought you were. The darkside mastered you. And she was weak and damaged – had already succumbed to its lure once before.

_No._ Zikl's voice, desperately faint and seemingly dwindling by the second. _You are strong_. _And . . . you understand the dangers as well as any Jedi alive_.

_I can't do this!_ She almost wailed back.

Yet if she didn't, they were all going to die. Like Tasker. Like Antilles.

In the end, she couldn't not try.

As soon as she touched it, the blackness filled her as rage and hate, rampaging tides flooding through her, tainted water pouring from a broken damn. The paralysis snapped instantly. Entire oceans of dark power opened up before her – this temple; this swamp; this entire festering world, all of it there for her to use. Derren was just a bug before her, ripe for squashing. Nothing could stand before her, not Darth Malefic, or Auza, or this person Derren claimed to be the true Sith Lord. Even Revan would be forced to bow, her slave and plaything. Exhilaration filled her, sweeping her up, mortal weaknesses and doubts falling away. The air around her seemed to crackle and pulse, alive . . .

And she let go of it. All of it, in a single instant, draining away between spread fingers that twitched to close and grasp it. That ached with the need.

_Lies_. The same lies that the Star Forge had seduced and distorted her with.

She was on her knees on the damp, mouldy stone, sobbing; wrecked and consumed by self-loathing. The tainted Force still swirled around her in a vortex and her craving for it wracked her with violent shudders. She wanted to reach out and regain the exhilaration so badly it hurt her physically.

She feared it and wanted it in equally compelling measure. To be powerful and confident and sure.

To lose everything of any value that she was.

Derren was looking at her, eyes wide with shock. Tasker and Antilles' corpses had collapsed, limp and lifeless to the floor.

Groaning with effort, cheeks streaked with tears, she staggered back to her feet. She could feel her heart thudding erratically. Zikl murmured words of congratulation and encouragement that didn't register as anything more than buzzing.

His shock quickly sublimated, Derren bared his teeth. He gestured sharply, summoning up a lightning storm to scourge her with.

Without any conscious effort or thought on her part, she found herself wrapped in a protective sheath of charged particles, deflecting the lightning away from her and leaving her unscathed. Something inside her faded and dwindled, leaving her feeling desperately lonely and disorientated.

One last gift.

She bit down on those feelings and shoved them aside. In response to the lightning she Force-pushed him back, towards the gaping pit Canderous had fallen into.

He caught himself easily, still more than a metre from the edge. "Kill the Jedi first and don't let old times sake get in the way." His smile was ruefully self-mocking. "Next time. Next time, I'll remember."

She rushed him, their lightsabers clashing together with a vicious crack.

The frailty of his appearance was deceptive. His defences held firm against her onslaught with an ease that suggested he was simply indulging her, watching and waiting for the moment to swat her down. Derren always had excelled at saber fighting, she recollected.

Renewed fury flared, and combined with the residues of dark side energy flickering through her, she actually managed to drive him back a couple of paces, right to the edge of the pit. There he steadied himself though and held firm.

An almost contemptuous parry as her momentum died away knocked her lightsaber out wide, leaving her defences gaping, wide open to a counterthrust . . .

Canderous's hand rose above the lip of the pit, clamping tight around Derren's ankle and yanking hard.

He swung and missed.

Bastila felt the heat from his lightsaber blade as it passed close by her face. She didn't hesitate over taking advantage as he tottered backwards, slicing straight through his right wrist then kicking him in the chest so that he lost his balance entirely.

He let out a startled gasp as he toppled backwards, landing a moment later with a wet, squelching thud.

Canderous pulled himself up from the pit, sprawling on his back on the floor, breathing heavily. His hands were torn and bleeding, and he was streaked from head to foot in gore, sculpted in glistening red, reeking of rotten flesh.

She barely saw him.

"He's still alive," Bastila murmured as Canderous hauled himself slowly and painfully back to his feet.

She was staring down into the pit, the harsh yellow glare from her lightsaber illuminating Derren as he lay, twitching feebly atop the mounds of dismembered body-parts, clutching the cauterised stump of his severed wrist to his chest. His eyes looked wild and unfocused, but she could still feel the Force gathering around him.

Her feelings were a mess – paralysing. She was unable to make head nor tail of them.

Without saying anything, Canderous calmly and methodically took a plasma grenade from his belt, activated it, then dropped it into the pit.

As she registered what he'd just done, Bastila started to yell at him furiously. "No! What the hell are you . . .?"

Calmly he grabbed her around the waist and yanked her back from the pit's edge. A blast of scorchingly hot air erupted upwards a second or so later.

When it had died away and silence had settled in, she whirled back on the Mandalorian furiously. The paralysis gripping the others had broken, and they fell to their knees – gasping, coughing.

Canderous seemed completely oblivious to her anger. After a moment he tilted his head to one side, apparently trying to dislodge something stuck in his ear. "Sorry, Princess. Did you say something?"

-s-s-

This time the Sith were withdrawing for real.

Dawn was approaching, light showing along the eastern horizon line. The night had lasted several hours longer than galactic standard. Entire swarms of drop ships seemed to be ascending and descending in a carefully choreographed dance, drawing an intricate criss-crossing mesh in the sky with their vapour trails.

Which meant either that they'd got what they wanted, or the Republic fleet had arrived from Cybloc. Or possibly both.

Tamar watched in a kind of dull, unfocused agony, waiting and waiting. Finally, after what seemed like hours – though the sky hadn't gotten that much brighter – the flow of drop ships seemed to stop.

He gave in and risked breaking radio silence. "Yuthura?"

No answer. There wasn't even static. The comm. link was completely and utterly dead.

Before the implications could set in as more than a vague sense of amorphous dread, the comm. link came to life on its own. It was Cullen, one of the Republic intelligence officers serving under Marshall. Tamar listened for a moment before cutting him off. "Are you all safe?"

There was a slight pause before a response came. "We . . . managed to evade the forward Sith lines. We're still in possession of the data-core."

"Which wasn't what I asked, was it?" Only the surface was calm.

The hesitation was longer this time. When Cullen spoke again, his voice contained the kind of careful matter-of-factness used to report bad news to a superior officer who you just knew was going to bite your head off, and no matter that you weren't to blame. "We were cornered by the Sith. Ban indicated she could lure them away from us using the Force. She was . . . apparently successful in that endeavour, because the rest of us were able to escape."

"And Yuthura?" Tamar's voice seemed to belong to someone else. He wondered how it could sound so . . . normal.

"We haven't heard from her in at least eight hours."

_If she were dead, I would know. I would know._

Except that logic dictated that he wouldn't. He'd spent the last few hours quite deliberately as far disconnected from the Force as he could manage. _Just because you love her, it doesn't change the way the universe works_. A shudder passed through him. _Not now. Not before we . . ._

"First chance she had, she ran off back to her masters," Marshall's voice interrupted, sour and angry.

If he'd been standing in front of Tamar, fist would have just connected very, very firmly with face. _There is no emotion_. He laughed bitterly at the sheer, inept stupidity of that idea. _Right_.

Cullen's voice interjected quickly. "Please forgive the Director. Ban used some kind of Force persuasion to stop him arguing with her. I don't think he's quite back in his right mind yet. The rest of us . . . we understand that we wouldn't be alive without what she did."

"Thank you Cullen." Part of him had gone insane. That was the only explanation he could come up with for this voice that kept on answering calmly and implacably. It proceeded to clinically reel off the location of a point they should head towards. "Jedi De'Nolo out."

"Is everything all right, sir?"

He didn't see who asked the question; just nodded slowly. "Everything's fine. Looks like we might just make it . . ." _Yes, everything's fine. Why wouldn't it be? There is no bloody Force-damned emotion after all. Instead we have peace, and isn't that just wonderful?_

He had to keep focused, he knew. There were a thousand different things he needed to think about and address, and when it came down to it, getting taken into custody by the main Republic fleet was better than being captured by the Sith only in matter of degree. If Jolee and the _Ajunta's Blade_ were still in the vicinity, then maybe . . .

He was furious with her. He didn't want to be, but he was. He wanted to yell at her, to . . .. _What if they hadn't killed her? What if they'd captured her?_ _What if she_ . . .. The thoughts crawled like venomous snakes in the bottom of his brain, hope and horror together.

There was a voice speaking in his ear. At first it didn't register, the turmoil in his head drowning it out. ". . . Tamar?" It sounded concerned.

He stopped in his tracks; swallowed. The relief made him shake.

"Hey, Yuthura." It still sounded dementedly calm and unconcerned. "Interesting night?"


	8. A Game for Spies

**8. A Game For Spies**

_"You know that he is going to turn on you," Morrigance stated calmly as the door closed behind Malak's broad back. Tension still crackled on the air like latent static as she stepped into Revan's personal training gym, deep in the bowels of his flagship, the _Firebrand

_The lights were currently dimmed, leaving deep pools of clinging shadow and reflecting off the displays of weaponry artfully arranged across three walls. She recognised blades of Mandalorian, Echani and Iridorian origin; ancient Sith swords and assassin daggers; scores of other alien designs she didn't recognise. None of this particularly interested her, and, strangely enough, she didn't think it interested Revan either, for all the collection dominated the room. It was merely another trapping. Something that fitted with the image of the great warrior and general, and allowed others to make easy assumptions about the nature of their Dark Lord._

_Said Dark Lord turned to look at her. "If I show weakness or complacency. If my attention wanders, or my resolve weakens," he agreed. Although he wasn't wearing his normal regalia, and his face was uncovered, it was still, Morrigance thought, always masked. "Can you think of a more capable executioner?"_

_"There will come a point when his anger drives him to it, and no matter all of that. Fear checks him only so far."_

_There was a pause in the conversation as Revan stowed his practice blade away, then picked up a towel to wipe away the sweat gleaming on his brow and sculpted torso._

_"So you council me to get rid of him then?" It was perfectly calm. "My oldest friend and confidant? My true right hand?"_

_She thought that there might be self-mocking in his words, but it was difficult to tell. She had never encountered anyone more difficult to read than him, and even when he did allow something to slip, she could never be entirely sure that it was genuine. "Friendship that gives no advantage has no place among the Sith," she observed neutrally. "It is a weakness and point of vulnerability others might exploit."_

_"You learn your lessons well. The words, at least."_

_Her jaw clamped tightly shut. He never lost his temper. He never raised his voice. And, as yet, she had never seen him resort to threats, let alone violence. Yet he still managed to scare her more than any individual she had ever met, simply through a shift in nuance in his voice._

_"If I get rid of him without very good reason," he continued, "I confess to weakness. I admit to everyone in the Sith Empire that he is more powerful than I, and that I am afraid of him."_

_"But those are not your reasons," she observed after a miniscule delay, deciding to take the risk._

_If anything, he seemed amused. "Someone once said that, as a leader, it is better to be feared than loved. I don't remember who it was, but whoever they were, they were an idiot. I've come to learn that one without the other is as good as worthless."_

_"And Malak allows you to be loved as well as feared," she murmured._

_A hint of a smile showed. "Indeed. He enables me to keep my hands clean of the more . . . dirty and unpleasant necessities – to retain my aura and mystique." Again, she thought she detected the self-mocking. "And if that is the apprentice, how truly terrifying must be the master?" The smile died away, if it had ever been there. "Those are not my reasons either, but they'll do for now."_

_He turned his back to her, pulling on a robe. After a second or so, she heard what sounded almost like a sigh. "He always was the better Jedi than me, you know. And now, I think . . ." His tone became musing. "I think that he is the better Sith."_

_She didn't say anything, knowing that he was probing for a reaction from her as much as he was imparting information. _Don't fill silence simply because it is there

_"Does that surprise you, my admission?" She couldn't discern anything useful from his voice. "I think what it comes down to, is faith. Something that he has always had and I have never been able to manage. Where he is able to take strength and meaning from the codes – to live and breathe them – I am reduced to coldly dissecting them, questioning and discarding every word until they lose all power and meaning."_

_A pause. He picked up his mask, and from the angle she stood, appeared to be studying his reflection in its surface. "That is the reason the Jedi first put us together, I believe. That I might learn the value of faith and acceptance from him, and he might learn to question and look beyond the surface from me. That we each be tempered by the other, our fatal flaws corrected. I think it pleased them, initially, when we grew to be good friends. They failed to foresee what they should have done – that he would one day transfer his faith from them to me."_

_A dry, humourless chuckle. "And look how I have repaid that faith, leading him to this. He is a man with every right to his anger."_

_Silence fell again. This time he didn't resume speaking._

_"Why are you telling me this?"_

_Finally, he looked back at her. His eyes seemed to pierce right through her. "Didn't you desperately want to know?"_

_She could find no good response._

_He smiled, and his entire attitude seemed to change in a single instant. "How go your lessons with Master Serebos?" He held up a hand. She felt him touch the Force ever so lightly, and a pair of alcoves opened in the wall. From each a drone floated out, hovering on repulsors. "No, don't tell me. Show me."_

_She eyed the drones with distaste. "I was not aware that you recruited me on account of my potential skill with a lightsaber. I prefer . . . other methods of fighting my battles."_

_Revan looked at her coldly. "You will not always be able to choose the ground on which you fight, no matter how careful or skilled you are. Now especially, before you establish a reputation, those beneath you will be looking eagerly to usurp your position. I will not do you any favours beyond those done already, and if one of them succeeds in ousting you, all they will get from me are cordial congratulations."_

_She nodded wordlessly, drawing her lightsaber from her belt. Its hilt was rather unusual, balanced for a single hand, surrounded by a protective basket woven from cortosis fibre. The blade, as it snapped on, glowed orange._

_The drones swooped and rolled towards her, spitting blaster fire . . ._

The shuttle touched down lightly on the landing pad, its exit ramp lowering with a soft hydraulic hiss. Morrigance strode down confidently, boot heels clicking rhythmically. Almost immediately cold wind caught her robes, flapping them around her body.

They had landed on the battlements of a vast fortress of grey stone, carved into a mountainside and surrounded by snow-dusted forest. Arranged at intervals, bulbous looking ion cannons pointed at the clear morning sky, while the shields that had dropped briefly to allow the shuttle to land were now up again, imparting a strange heat-haze-like distortion to the scene.

She strode imperiously between lines of impassive Sith guards flanking the way, not deigning to acknowledge them.

Ahead of her, Darth Auza awaited, somewhere in the fortress's bowels. Once again, she played at being an apprentice, though this time the game was one of her own devising.

_"Enough."_

_The drones broke off, ceasing fire and retreating into their respective alcoves. Morrigance's breath came quickly, sweat glistening upon her skin. She was unmarked though, having turned every attack aside._

_Revan looked at her appraisingly. His expression revealed neither pleasure nor displeasure. "Impeccable. Rarely have I seen anyone learn so quickly and so well." It didn't sound at all like a compliment. "And if you ever have cause to fight someone like Malak, you'll be dead in about ten seconds flat."_

_She didn't respond, simply waiting for him to continue. "And yes, I know you would never choose to confront one such as him by such crude means." He paused, padding lithely across to a low table and picking up a datapad. He started keying. "Serebos is very good at what he does, but he tends to produce a line of replicas of himself. Sometimes that is fine, but sometimes his style simply does not suit a person, especially one without his reach and brute strength."_

_He tossed the datapad to her, which she caught reflexively._

_"Pay this man a visit when your duties allow. He's an Echani, in his day a firedancer without peer. He'll teach you how to better overcome advantages of reach and strength – remove some of the predictability from your style and give you a cutting edge."_

_Morrigance nodded, face impassive._

_"Tell me," he said suddenly, after a period of silence, catching her by surprise. "Now you have had the time to become more familiar with it, what is your opinion of the Sith code?"_

_As she hesitated, he added, "It is not a test. Merely curiosity on my part."_

Everything is a test, _she thought, but didn't say. Except with him, you were never quite sure exactly what the test was, apart from the fact it was rarely what it, on the surface, seemed._

_The truth, she decided eventually, and let herself be damned by that. "I think that life is far too complex to boil down to simplistic codes, and those who try are doomed to fail abjectly."_

_Revan nodded and turned away. She thought that this time he was pleased._

-s-s-

"Thank you." Juhani smiled as she accepted the steaming mug of caffa from Belaya. She was hollow-cheeked; almost wan looking, and the expression appeared somewhat forced.

She turned back towards the gunship's viewport. Her short, velvety fur was a fraction darker than normal, still somewhat damp. She looked ever so slightly silly in a tatty old green bathrobe that was starting to go threadbare.

Belaya touched her shoulder, and Juhani struggled to avoid shrugging her hand off irritably. Since their reunion, Belaya had almost been like a mother hen, fussing around her nearly constantly, touching her as if to reassure herself that she was really there and not just a figment of her imagination, and plying her with anything and everything she might conceivably need.

Juhani tried to tell herself that Belaya meant well, and that her concern was touching. But the reality was, it just felt incredibly wearing. After Taris's undercity, everything felt wearing – too-bright, too-loud, having to talk to other people and interact with them, listening and responding. It all made her headache and her temper fray into tatters. A shudder passed through her. She supposed she just needed time to readjust.

Her thoughts kept straying to Mission, and how she had failed her. How, when the pressure was on, she had cracked.

"Juhani, is something the matter?"

The Cathar shook her head. Admitting anything was wrong would be sure to provoke more fussing, which was absolutely the last thing she wanted right now.

"You still look frighteningly thin. I can feel the bones standing out beneath your fur. Are you sure I can't get you anything else?"

She quickly bit back a sharp and unwarranted retort – she'd heard the same refrain; phrased in numerous slightly different ways, at least half a dozen times in the last hour. "Belaya, if I eat anything more right now I'm not sure whether I'll burst or simply be sick."

And even then, she'd managed to offend her. It was quickly suppressed, but the sense she'd received was clear enough. This time Juhani didn't bother to stifle the sigh. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just . . ." She trailed off, not sure what it was 'just'. She couldn't work out when conversation between them had become such a strain. "How is Zaalbar doing?"

Belaya stroked the fine fur on her cheek. "Grouchy. Like someone else I could mention."

No response was forthcoming from Juhani.

"I know you're concerned about this girl. Mission Vao, right? But there's nothing you can do right now, and worrying yourself sick over it is helping no one. What you need to do right now is concentrate on getting healthy."

"I failed her. I failed all those supposedly under my command. When I suddenly could no longer feel the Force, I went to pieces utterly." She grimaced, cutting herself off. Even to her own ears, it sounded self-pitying and dangerously close to pathetic. "And, yes I know. Take the lessons of your mistakes, but do not dwell on them unnecessarily, or let them paralyse you." The events of the mercenary attack on Taris kept playing in her head every time she tried to rest though. In the undercity, there had been more pressing troubles to occupy her thoughts, simple survival being the foremost. But now . . . patience had never been one of the more notable strengths of her temperament. "I wish I could take that lesson to heart as easily as I can repeat it."

Belaya had stepped back, and was looking at her in concern. "You've changed, Juhani. I can never remember you being so . . ." A hesitation. "Distant."

Juhani managed to swallow words she knew she would regret voicing. _Of course I've changed. Life tends to have that affect_. She didn't want to start an argument, and she couldn't honestly explain even to herself why she felt so uncomfortable and defensive of her personal space.

She tried to change tack, moving away from the personal onto steadier footing. "How long until we rendezvous with Tamar and the others?"

Instantly she knew from Belaya's reaction – a flash of quickly stifled annoyance and hurt – that she'd made a mistake, though she couldn't immediately fathom what.

"They should reach us in about ten hours." The words were precise – almost chilly. "I'll leave you to get some sleep." She turned towards the door.

Juhani started to call after her and apologise, but the words stuck in her throat and she let Belaya go. After a short time, she moved to the end of her neatly made bunk and sat down, cross-legged. There she tried to meditate and, for a time at least, find some hint of serenity.

-s-s-

A dark orange sea lapped gently against a crystal shore.

It was familiar and strange at the same time, and as he'd walked through narrow streets earlier that afternoon, haunted by vague ghosts of the past, Carth had concluded that the old saying was right: you never could go back.

Every step had brought back old memories of walking similar thoroughfares. Perhaps even some of the same ones. It was difficult to be sure.

It had been sixth months after the armistice at the end of the Mandalorian war. Revan and Malak's disappearance, with a sizable portion of the Republic fleet, had caused anxiety in certain quarters, but generally, despite the lingering chaos, there'd been a mood of cautious optimism in the galaxy, trade and tourism that had almost shut down entirely over the past years of desperate turmoil slowly springing back to life.

The Berchest posting had supposedly been a reward – a cushy number given to a decorated hero while he recovered from the lingering wounds and trauma. In truth, it had felt more like punishment and purgatory, the inaction and endless, lazy days of nothing whatsoever happening gnawing at his soul. When his old friend and mentor, Saul Karath had contacted him, offering a new assignment and a way out, he'd almost bitten the man's hand off in his eagerness to accept.

He hadn't seen – or hadn't wanted to see – the bitterness that had crept into Karath, even back then. Bitterness at being passed over for a promotion that everyone had said was sure to be his; at having his career effectively sidelined for his refusal to play along with the Republic Senate's political games of butt-kissing, petty intrigues and back-stabbing. At that stage, it hadn't yet developed into the full-blown hate and obsession about the Republic's weakness and corruption it would eventually become, but the seeds were there.

And then, of course, he'd had to tell Morgana.

They'd walked along the waterfront, the sun setting over the orange sea and turning the breaking waves into brilliant golden fire. A fresh and slightly chill wind had ruffled her dark, collar-length hair, and as she'd looked at him sidelong, her face had seemed cold and angry. The frown lines showing around her mouth gave no hint of the warm and generous smile that had been one of the first things to draw him to her.

_When are you going to be a father and a husband?_

Like you promised, unspoken but implicit.

_Can you honestly say you're happy here, away from Telos?_ Now he winced at the memory of those words, and more especially the thoughts that had lain behind them – the implicit emotional blackmail. _Only last week you were saying how you didn't think you could live here: that Dustil was missing his friends, and his schoolwork was suffering . . ._

_Don't you dare try to make this about me and Dustil_._ Don't you dare, Carth Onasi. This is solely about what you want._

_Now wait just a minute!_

Only the presence of other people, out walking around them, had kept the argument from escalating catastrophically.

_The war is over, Carth. The war is over_.

_Only in name. Everywhere is still plunged in chaos. How can I sit around doing nothing when the Republic still needs me? Could you really love a man who would do that? I have a responsibility . . ._

_You have a responsibility to your family!_

Weighty and uncomfortable silence had settled in, and the distance between them had seemed to measure in the order of light years. Eventually she'd spoken again, over the lapping of the ocean waves, her tone slightly more conciliatory. _Look Carth, I love that you care about the bigger picture, and that you're one of the few men in this galaxy who's willing to stand up and protect the things you believe in. You wouldn't be the man I married if you didn't. But there comes a time when enough is enough. If you don't get out now, you never will. There'll always be an excuse._

He'd hesitated. _Morgana . . ._

_No buts, Carth. Dustil is twelve now. How many of those years have you shared with him? You're turning into a stranger to your own son, and to be honest, you're turning into a stranger to me too. _She'd raked a hand through her hair, brushing it back from her face, her lips tight. _It's gotten to the point where it feels strange, waking up with you in bed next to me, instead of waking up alone. Is that way things should be? Because if it is, I just don't know how much of more of it I'm willing to take._

In the end, he'd returned to Saul and very reluctantly gone back on his decision. Admiral Dodonna had talked him out of resigning his commission entirely – no great and difficult achievement – and instead he'd ended up taking a year's sabbatical to be with his family.

For most of it, it had not been a happy year, and now he was able to see that that had been largely down to him. Looking back at the man he used to be, Carth saw only an idiot, incapable of recognising the value of those wonderfully precious things he'd had.

And then, of course, Revan and Malak had returned. And he'd gone back to the fleet, this time with Morgana's blessing – though the fear in her eyes when he'd left had been clear to see.

The past melted slowly away, leaving only the present. He let out an unsteady breath.

"You look like you're miles away."

Carth looked round and managed a brittle smile. _Force preserve me_. "Sindra! How nice to see you again." He wondered if his attempt at enthusiasm sounded as utterly fake to her as it did to him. _I'm really not cut out for this_.

From her return smile, obviously not. "You didn't think I was going to let such a _delectable_ specimen as yourself slip through my fingers, did you, Valdan?"

He chuckled, though it was a chuckle of thinly veiled desperation. The way she pronounced delectable was enough to provoke the beginnings a cold sweat.

Sindra Taran was a Twi'lek, yellow skinned, graceful, and in some respects probably one of the most beautiful women he had ever laid eyes on. She dripped jewellery, wearing a thigh-split figure hugging black gown that had probably cost as much as a small spaceship, and possessed the kind of predatory air that reminded him of a Krayt Dragon that had just caught the scent of a wounded Bantha.

It hadn't taken Carth long to work out that he was tonight's Bantha. Long enough though that, by the time the realisation sank in, it was already too late to escape. At least without creating the kind of scene he couldn't afford.

"I saw that you'd finished your drink." She proffered the second glass she was holding to him. "So I thought I should bring you another."

He managed another smile as he accepted it – Corellian brandy of a quality he hadn't tasted in years. "You're just too kind."

She leant in closer to him and the cloud of perfume she wore filled his nostrils. It left his head swirling, and he wondered vaguely if there was something narcotic mixed in with it. There was a small part of him – a part that he was trying desperately hard not to listen to – whispering that being predated by her might not be so bad a fate.

Except that he wasn't here to enjoy the party, get drunk and get himself laid. He wasn't suddenly eighteen again.

Except she'd made no attempt to disguise the fact that she was married, to an 'an incredibly wealthy, but incredibly dull man, who just doesn't understand my needs'. And rich husbands tended to be the kind of people who could afford to employ others highly skilled in the art of doing unpleasant things to the kneecaps of those who messed around with their wives.

Sindra leant even closer. So close that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body. She whispered in his ear, "You're Fleet, aren't you? I can always tell."

Carth froze, almost dropping the brandy glass. For a moment, heart thudding, he thought she'd seen through his disguise.

It had been decided before they got here that there was too much of a risk that someone would recognise Carth Onasi, the now renowned – or at least, vaguely known – war hero. Since the events of the Star Forge, his face had appeared in enough newscasts and wildly inaccurate documentaries that it was reasonably well known, even in places he'd never visited before. Somewhere like Berchest, where he'd once been stationed, the risks were even greater. Consequently, his appearance had been altered enough that he'd struggled to recognise his own reflection when he'd looked at it in the mirror earlier on.

His hair was now blond, and for the first time in years, no dark shadow of stubble covered his jaw. Tinted contacts turned his eyes murky green, while his skin was tanned several shades darker than usual. Perhaps the most marked change though, were the overlays designed to change the angles of his cheekbones – one of the two main characteristics, along with the spacing of a person's eyes, that human facial recognition software typically keyed on.

Even his voice had been altered, transformed by a dermal microphone worn over his larynx.

Along with the flash and expensive clothes he was wearing, he hadn't been able to escape the suspicion that he now looked like a sleazy jerk.

"It's the way you stand; the carefully controlled formality and poise, like you're ready to . . . _spring_ to attention." He relaxed ever so slightly; started breathing again as he realised it wasn't him specifically she'd recognised. "Fleet men have always been my favourites." Her voice was almost a purr. "They always know just how to treat a lady. And such stamina . . ." Sindra left the words hanging. Apparently, she went for sleazy looking jerks in a big way.

He tried to pretend he'd missed her meaning. "I'm surprised it still shows. It's been a few years. Now I'm just a simple businessman."

She giggled.

He felt himself blushing, despite his best efforts. It felt like he'd inadvertently blundered onto the set of a holoporn shoot just before the action got underway. _Surely no real person acts like this? I mean surely? I'm not that naïve, am I?_

"So, how is it that you know our esteemed host?" Rather desperately, he tried to change the subject.

The host of this event was one Jerstyl Daxar. Twenty years ago, he'd been an executive with responsibility for research and development at Aratech Systems, before being ousted in some kind of share dealing scandal. Since then he'd gone freelance, and was now a billionaire who'd made his fortune in the arms trade. He had a reputation for discretion, an ability to meet extremely specialist needs, and a willingness to sell to any side of any given conflict for the right price.

Republic Intelligence had apparently been aware of him for years, though thus far the intricately constructed webs of legitimate businesses he surrounded himself with had prevented any illegal activity being pinned on him. The comm. logs Tamar and Yuthura had recovered indicated that he – or someone inside his organisation, at least – had been consistently in contact with Darth Auza over the past few months.

"Jerstyl you mean?" Sindra gave a desultory shrug. "Oh _I_ don't know him at all dear. Not really. He's some kind of associate of my husband."

Right now Jerstyl was about thirty yards away, further up the spectacularly bizarre crystal garden towards the main house – a startling structure of crystal spires that glowed orange where the sun shone through them. He was in conversation with a pair of Bothans, a tall, elegantly attired woman with hair and make-up to match a Naboo princess at his side.

"Your husband is here?"

She laughed smokily. "Is that why you're being such a shy boy?" One of her head tails brushed against his shoulder.

Carth knew enough about Twi'leks to understand exactly how intimate a gesture that was. Short of sticking her hand down the front of his trousers and giving a firm squeeze, she couldn't have done anything much more forward. He would have backed off, but unfortunately, he was already pressed against a railing with only a ten-metre drop into the sea beyond it.

"You needn't worry dear, hubby's away on a business trip to . . . Kuat I think it is this time." She gave a contemptuous flick of wrist and head tail to indicate she didn't really care. "Besides, I'm nothing more than a trophy to him. As long as I look decorative on his arm when he wants me to, he doesn't care about what I do. No doubt he's sharing his bed with a couple of joygirls even as we speak."

Just for a moment, a kind of desperate, bitter loneliness shone through to the surface, and Carth almost managed to feel sorry for her.

It quickly passed as soon as she opened her mouth again. "But enough about my husband. I'm sure there are much more interesting things we could be discussing." She trailed a fingertip down the front of his shirt, pulling open a couple of the buttons. "Perhaps we can go somewhere more private, hmm? You could show me your . . . tattoos. I know you handsome Fleet boys all have very big ones."

Raised voices, coming from around the area Jerstyl was standing, drew Carth's attention briefly away from Sindra. A blaster shot rang out. Someone screamed.

To his shame, his first thought was actually one of relief.

-s-s-

The heavy iron gates parted smoothly and silently in front of Morrigance as she approached them. As she stepped between them, she was aware, almost subliminally, of being scanned. Over a thousand years old, the Sith fortress was an anachronistic mixture of ancient, over-scaled stonework and modern state of the art defence systems blended into one.

The scans would find nothing out of the ordinary. She wore none of her usual array of implants or micro-droid defence systems, or any of her less conventional weaponry. Her lightsaber was there, hanging at her hip, simply because its absence would provoke more suspicion than its presence. That aside, she would give anyone watching the appearance of walking unprepared into a rancor pit.

Which, all in all, suited her well enough.

"Ah, my apprentice. In all honesty I hadn't expected you to show up today."

Darth Auza's liquid voice greeted her well before she was able to see him, given the bright lights directed deliberately at her eye level so as to dazzle her. She continued to walk steadily forward, footsteps quiet upon the hard, bare stone. Hanging from rafters high above, red and black Sith war banners stirred with displaced air as the gates closed silently behind her.

"My Lord? When have I ever disobeyed your will? I have always extended every effort in your service."

Of course he hadn't expected her to show up, she thought. He'd expected her to run. It was what he would have done, and by extension, what he expected anyone else with a reasonable level of intelligence to do.

So now, he was left wondering: was she stupid, to walk voluntarily into a situation where one of the possible outcomes was her death? Was she simply overconfident, imagining that he had uncovered nothing incriminating about her, and still believing that she could talk her way back into his good graces? Or did she know something he didn't, and had he possibly made another mistake – like the one he had made in inadvertently inviting Revan into his presence?

Paranoia was such a wonderful tool to exploit. If you managed not to misjudge it.

His gurgling chuckle came a couple of beats later than it should have done if natural. "And so much more besides, eh Elleste, my dear?"

She was now close enough to him that she could finally see him properly, the lights no longer shining directly in her eyes. He was seated in what resembled a heavily modified walker, his throne surrounded by a transparisteel bubble and mounted on mechanical legs. As a consequence, he towered over her, bloated visage distorted slightly by the curve of the glass.

Flanking him on either side, dressed in matching uniforms of plain, unadorned grey, was Celyanda – a pair of perfect, almost delicate looking, dolls. There was no sign of his usual entourage of collared slaves, or any kind of formal guard befitting a would-be Dark Lord of the Sith.

But then, Morrigance knew well enough what Celyanda was capable of. Any other guard was more or less superfluous.

"My Lord?" She allowed a note of puzzlement into her voice, as if she didn't quite understand what he was getting at.

He sighed, ostensibly in disappointment. "Elleste, Elleste. How I hoped – nay, how I prayed – that you would offer me some kind of satisfactory explanation for your behaviour of late. Yet here you are, standing before me, being evasive before our conversation has even properly begun."

"I'm sorry, my Lord? I'm still not quite sure I follow you." She bowed her head.

Silence dragged. Auza seemed to be waiting for her to try to fill it, but relented when he realised she would quite happily stand there the entire day. "When I invited you here, apprentice, it was merely out of concern that I had become lax in my training of you, as evinced by the inappropriate attitude you have been showing of late."

"If I spoke out of turn, I humbly apologise my Lord." She kept her head lowered, though her attention was primarily directed towards Celyanda. At the moment, they stood entirely quiescent, though their Force presence was absolutely towering.

A podgy hand made a waving gesture, as if swatting away an invisible fly. "That no longer concerns me so much, Elleste. Especially in light of what I have discovered in the meantime. You see, I was moved to take a closer look at some of your recent activities and movements."

Trust, she thought dryly, a man with such an unpleasant sounding voice to be so tediously verbose with it. "My lord, I was under the impression that the apprentice of the Dark Lord, and supreme ruler of the Sith, was expected to show initiative in carrying out her duties."

The sound of his gurgling laugh set her teeth on edge behind her mirror-finished mask. "Oh, you've shown initiative. I'll certainly give you that much. It's more the direction that initiative has taken that concerns me."

"How so, my lord? Every action I've undertaken has been designed to further our cause."

"You were given the task of disposing of Revan. I fail to see to how any number of your recent activities remotely relate to that goal."

_For someone who had been such a high-ranking Sith for so long, you fail to see much of anything, don't you?_ "In our last conversation you instructed me to leave the matter in your hands, my Lord. Has there been any news on that score yet?"

If she hadn't already known the answer then the abrupt hardening of his expression would have been a dead giveaway. "That is not the subject at hand, my apprentice." Underneath, she got the impression that he was seething.

"Our goals are surely far broader than simply killing Revan, master." Morrigance managed to keep her contempt concealed. For the moment. "Surely the gains that we've made in destabilising the Republic . . .?"

"It is not for you to determine what our goals are!" His voice echoed off the stone walls, and she could hear his breathing, wet and gurgling as he struggled to control it.

So that was that then. Auza would never permit anyone to witness such a loss of control where he intended for them to walk away. He prided himself on his image as a cool manipulator – a bloated spider at the centre of a vast and sticky web. Anything running contrary to that image had to be ruthlessly expunged.

She steeled herself. In all honesty, she had never truly expected that she would be able to talk her way out of this, but it was an annoyance nonetheless.

The Force gathered within him. He had always been strong in that regard, despite the growing weakness of his flesh. Her defences were already up though, subtle and slippery, almost invisible unless you knew exactly what to look for.

He lashed out, enveloping her in the smothering grip of his vast will, squeezing tight. She felt his mental probes attacking her mind, somehow reminiscent of fat, flesh-boring worms, dripping in poisonous slime. For the moment, she managed to keep them from penetrating without giving the appearance of resisting overtly. The effort made her jaw clench. "My apologies, great lord. I did not mean to overstep my bounds," she gritted out.

"Overstep your bounds?" His laughter was black with rage – a bubbling, bottomless tar pit. "You didn't seriously think I wouldn't find out, did you, Elleste? About you siphoning of resources from my fleet. About your secret meetings and communications with Jerstyl Daxar, turning him from my cause and plotting with him to betray me."

And there was the downside to dealing with paranoids, she thought sourly. No matter what you anticipated and prepared for, they always managed to surprise you with their twisted leaps of logic.

"But don't concern yourself about that. I've already moved to take care of dearest Jerstyl. I expect to hear from the Catcher on the matter immanently."

-s-s-

Carth watched events unfolding in the kind of slow motion, adrenaline-dilated timeframe he had come to associate with the more intense kind of space battles, where each individual moment became something crystallised and distinct.

Jerstyl Daxar had crumpled to the ground in a graceless heap. From the brief glimpse he caught of the blaster burn, right in the middle of his face, Carth didn't think he was going to be getting up again. Ever.

Several of those near Daxar had gathered in close around their host, bending over him to see if they could help. The two Bothans, less bravely, but possibly much more sensibly, had dived immediately for the cover of the refreshment tables. The heavily made up woman, who Carth had come to think of as the Naboo Princess, was scanning the crowds of guests. Something about the instant, hair-trigger alertness of her posture brought to mind elements of both startled deer and hunting cat, and suggested she was something a hell of a lot more than just another of Daxar's decorations.

There was no immediate sign of where the blaster shot had originated from.

Abruptly the Naboo Princess reached up, grabbing hold of a pair of six inch long pins around which her hair was intricately sculpted, and yanking them out. In a single, effortlessly smooth motion, she threw them both, hitting a pair of human waiters in the middle of the chest.

The waiters went down, spasming violently, their faces turning purple with a rapidity that suggested some kind of extremely fast acting neurotoxin. Someone else screamed, ear-splittingly shrill.

From that point onwards, everything degenerated into chaos almost too quickly to follow.

A servitor droid dropped the drinks tray it was carrying, one of its arms reconfiguring into what looked like a built in heavy repeater unit. The Naboo Princess was already moving as it opened fire, with the result that it only managed to scythe down those who were still gathered around Daxar's body.

As she darted forwards, her dress flared out behind her, cut in such a way as to minimise impediment to her movements. Carth also noted that, unlike many of the other female guests, she wasn't wearing heels. The rigid edge of her hand took another of the catering staff in the throat. Pulling him into her as if he was a particularly clumsy dancing partner, she caught him before he could collapse, using him as a human shield.

The servitor droid proceeded to pump blaster shot after blaster shot into that shield, failing to hit her even once.

Another 'waiter' had pulled a blaster pistol and was trying to move round to find an angle where he could get a clear shot on her.

Carth was still struggling to work out whether it was the Naboo Princess or the catering staff who were the assassins. Then another of the servitor droids started deliberately and obviously shooting nearby guests. The remorseless efficiency of its targeting reminded him disconcertingly of HK-47, only without the latter droid's dementedly psychotic glee.

_That would be the catering staff then_. Partygoers ran – a wild, panicked, screaming herd – back up towards the house.

Part of him wondered, rather insanely given the urgency of the immediate circumstances, how the caterers had managed to get the weaponry past Daxar's extremely tight security. He hadn't been able to come up with a way of getting his own blasters inside, and as a consequence, was completely unarmed – not carrying even so much as a vibroknife.

Only a few seconds had passed since the opening shot. In that time, he hadn't moved a muscle.

"Get down, you idiot," a voice hissed at him. It took him a couple of beats to recognise it as belonging to Sindra. He'd almost managed to forget about her entirely for a moment there.

She grabbed hold of his arm, yanking on it painfully. The catering staff had by now given up all pretence of being anything other than assassins, and were firing at the fleeing guests indiscriminately. It looked like they'd decided that massacring everybody was the best way of covering their tracks. Briefly, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the Naboo Princess in the midst of the panicked, milling throng. Then she was gone from his view.

"Valdan," A voice was saying from some close by him. He ignored it.

"Damn it, Carth!" Spoken directly into his left ear, the words jolted through him like several thousand volts of electricity. As he shot Sindra a startled look it finally sank in that almost everything about her – posture; facial set; even her accent – had altered dramatically.

The bored and predatory wealthy businessman's wife was completely gone.

"How the hell do you . . .?"

"Later," she snapped.

A blaster-shot passed uncomfortably close by his head, communicating the message far more effectively than any words could have managed.

Up towards the house the scene most closely resembled something from a slaughterhouse, finery-clad bodies piling up like chopped cordwood as they were gunned down remorselessly. A glance out to sea showed a pair of armoured hovercraft approaching the house rapidly. From the look of them – definitely not Calius city police authority – Carth surmised that they weren't coming to the rescue.

A part of him wondered how he could possibly manage to remain so detached. But he knew the answer well enough from all the countless battles he'd been in. Because there was no choice. The true horror would hit home only later, when the adrenaline stopped flowing and reality descended with a crash.

If there was a later.

"Please . . .. Please, don't. I-I have money! I can . . ." A terrified, pleading voice was cut off abruptly by another blaster shot, this one from uncomfortably close by.

Sindra – or whoever the hell she really was – gave up yanking on his arm and trod on the back of his knee, forcing him to fall forwards. She fell across his back, her weight pinning him to the ground. He cottoned on quickly enough to throttle back his instinctive urge to struggle and throw her off.

Between the screams of the dying and bursts of blaster fire, he could hear the sound of footsteps steadily approaching. He tried to still his breathing and keep himself completely motionless. Lying across him, Sindra seemed to be striving to do likewise. His heartbeat was far too loud: a wildly percussive, frantically escalating drum beat. The back of his throat was too dry, and the urge to cough grew stronger by the passing second.

The footsteps stopped.

Then, after a couple of eternally long, draining instants, he felt Sindra's weight shift ever so slightly on top of him. She was heavier than she looked, he reflected as it suddenly became much easier to breathe.

"Plug your ears." The whisper was so quiet it was mostly subliminal vibration against his skin. A fraction later, he heard something small and hard skittering across the ground

Sindra whistled sharply. Someone else grunted in surprise. "What the . . ."

Belatedly, Carth remembered her warning and clamped his hands over his ears. Even so, the high-pitched sonic pulse-wave almost deafened him. As sharp pain stabbed through his skull, vibrating through his teeth and making his innards feel like quivering semi-liquid jelly, he was dimly aware of her rolling off him, and forced himself to move too.

As he came up, ears still filled by a high ringing note and his balance temporarily shot, he saw Sindra crouching over the body of one of the assassins. He couldn't tell with that one quick look whether the man was dead, or merely unconscious.

Finally, the ground stopped lurching and spinning, and stabilised beneath him. He saw that she'd lost one of her earrings. It was probably a crazy thing to notice in the circumstances. She tossed a blaster pistol his way, which he caught reflexively.

Something moved in the corner of his eye. Carth whirled and fired in a single motion, catching another waiter-attired-assassin straight between the eyeballs a fraction before she could shoot him.

"Come on," Sindra snapped at him.

Right now wasn't the time for the questions and misgivings he had. With a deep breath, he ran after her, trying to block out the sights and sounds of the slaughter taking place around them. The smell of blaster charred flesh, and worse, tugged at his nostrils.

Old flashes of Dxun stirred unbidden, triggered by the smell as much as anything.

He'd been part of the Republic taskforce that had landed on that strange jungle moon after the main battle with the Mandalorian forces there was over. It hadn't been part of his normal duties, but times had been desperate and personnel shortages so severe that anyone accredited to pilot a light freighter or a drop ship had been roped in. They'd discovered a makeshift prison camp. Rather than risk leaving any of the enemy at their back, the Mandalorians had shot well over a hundred unarmed Republic prisoners of war dead to cover their retreat. That day the smell of blaster-charred flesh had been so overpoweringly repugnant that he'd almost thrown up. Several others had gone considerably beyond almost.

Grimly he throttled the past back, where it belonged.

One of the servitor droids fixed and turned on them as they ran. He shot it twice, staggering it, but the energy shields surrounding it held firm. The return fire from its heavy-repeater sent both him and Sindra diving full length for cover behind the same table he'd seen the two Bothans scramble under earlier.

He found himself lying next to the body of a middle-aged woman. She'd been shot in the back of the head, her hair cooked to a crisp. Close by, he could hear someone pleading pitifully, sobbing and obviously in tremendous pain. Another blaster shot cut the sobbing off, terminally.

In that moment, fury blazed. It overwhelmed the thudding, strangling fear; his instincts for self-preservation; everything. He didn't want to escape then. He wanted to kill every single one of them – to make them feel the same fear and suffering they were inflicting.

He glimpsed a pair of uniformed legs walking the other side of the table and shot out the assassin's ankle, bone shattering with the impact. There was a scream of shock and pain, and the man collapsed.

"Carth!" Sindra's voice, directly in his ear finally penetrated the walls of rage. The servitor droid had moved round far enough to very nearly take their cover out of the equation and get a clear shot at them. He fired at its head to make it duck briefly back.

His breath was coming in short, harsh gasps. He shoved the fury back inside its box. After the Leviathan and the Star Forge, and the deaths of Saul Karath and Malak, he'd thought – or at least hoped – that he'd managed to bury that particular box for good. But when something had been such a fundamental part of you for so long, you couldn't get rid of it just like that.

He followed Sindra in rolling beneath the table and out the other side.

Sprinting up towards the house, trying to keep low, the density of bodies increased markedly, impossible to avoid. As a blaster shot fizzed millimetres over his shoulder, scorching through the material of his jacket and scalding the skin beneath, Carth trod on one of them that turned out not to be quite dead yet. The Deveronian male groaned, reaching up feebly . . .

But Carth was already past him, sick to the stomach. Pausing for even a moment would have meant certain death.

They made it inside just ahead of a strafing burst from the servitor droid.

The interior of the house was almost as big a shambles as the crystal garden, Daxar's tastefully expensive belongings scattered and smashed by the frantic stampede that had already passed through. And there were more dead party guests. More assassins too.

It turned into a running battle as they moved from room to room. Carth lost all track of time, the world contracting down to a seemingly endless repetition of gunfire and frantically darting from one bit of cover to the next.

As they reached a set of stairs going both up and down, Sindra immediately started to descend.

"The exit's that way," Carth gestured ahead of them, his voice ragged with fatigue. He paused to wipe away some of the sweat pouring down his face.

Sindra's breath came short and fast as she looked back at him. "And you don't think they'll be waiting for anyone coming out that way?" She stopped, leaning against the banister railing. Tremors passed through her shoulders and her head tails twitched erratically. Her yellow skin looked greasy and jaundiced, and her make-up was smeared and running. "Besides, Daxar has a security barrier. I looked through one of the windows a few minutes back. It's up." A pause for breath. "Generator's this way I think. We need to take it out."

He looked at her, all the myriad questions and suspicions he had flooding back. "Who . . ."

"Not now!" she snapped. Her teeth, he noticed, like those of most Twi'lek's looked very sharp.

Before anything more could be said, another assassin burst through a door at the end of the corridor. Carth's reflexes were slowing with fatigue, and the assassin managed to get the first shot off.

Thankfully, Carth shot more accurately. As the assassin toppled backwards, dying, he looked sidelong at the scorch mark on the wall less than ten centimetres from his head and shuddered.

Before they managed to descend more than halfway down the steps, a low rumbling roar came from somewhere up ahead, vibrating through the walls and floor.

"I'm guessing that's your generator," Carth commented when the commotion had died down again.

Sindra opened her mouth to respond, but abruptly clamped it shut again before any words could emerge. At the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them, was the woman Carth had seen earlier at Daxar's side.

Without the pins to hold it, the heavy coils of her hair fell around her head like a tangled nest of gleaming black snakes. The thick mask of her make-up was a mess, the elegant artistry of it smeared away into bruise-like smudges so that she resembled a clown who had been weeping copiously. It did, however, still make it almost impossible to get a clear idea of what she truly looked like.

She held a blaster pistol, aimed up at them.

"Look, we're not your enemy. We don't mean you any harm." Carth was first to break the silence. Whether or not any of what he said was true, he had no real clue.

"Behind you," she replied simply, after a second or so.

Carth blinked, and then whirled in realisation.

Because of the warning, he and Sindra were able to shoot first. The gunfight was quick and brutal, and when it was over the two of them were both still standing, and three more of the assassins lay dead.

The woman, though, was gone. There was no indication of what direction she'd taken.

After a pause, they both decided that they should follow her lead and make themselves scarce.

-s-s-

"You've done what?" Morrigance's voice was quiet – artificially calm.

For a brief moment, Darth Auza seemed genuinely taken aback by her reaction. _Didn't fit with the internal script_, she reflected. He recovered quickly. "Is that really any kind of tone for an apprentice to address their master? Especially an apprentice in so tenuous a situation as yourself, my dear Elleste."

She looked up at him – a vast, corpulent mound of pallid, scabrous flesh, encased in a transparisteel bubble, and too enfeebled even to move under his own power. She looked at his small, wet mouth, and dark, beady eyes. She had always known that this moment would eventually come, where all pretence was stripped away.

In truth, she had longed for it.

Her continued silence seemed to infuriate him, reigniting his briefly punctured rage. He still appeared to believe that he had her held fast. "If you seek to defy me, apprentice, know that I can make your suffering truly terrible. Have I not shown you that much already?"

Abruptly the weight of his will clamped down tightly on her – a giant, crushing fist seeking to squeeze the life out of her, inch by painful inch. Her defences held, just barely under the strain, though a strangled groan of effort was torn from her throat in the process.

Apparently, Auza took that effort to be pain, chuckling wetly, like a gurgling drain. He continued to squeeze tighter and tighter for a few seconds longer, before easing back just slightly. She struggled to catch her breath. "Now. Tell me. What were you plotting with Jerstyl? Be quick."

_Or be dead_. One of old Drevon Rae's favourite sayings. Before he failed to be quick, and died at Revan's hand. That seemed such a long time ago now, more than the simple passage of years.

"Plotting, my Lord?" Her voice was cool and emotionless, though the words themselves were anything but. "I was plotting how to further reduce the Republic to chaotic shambles. To ignite hate and fear and civil war. Where exactly did you think I got the poison to slay the Jedi Council, if not from Jerstyl Daxar, you useless sack of festering blubber? But in your mind everything that takes place in this universe revolves around you, doesn't it?"

For a moment, Auza appeared absolutely apoplectic, too angry to speak. Drool spilled from one corner of his mouth, little quivering tremors passing through him. Then he lashed out at her with everything he had, seeking to squash her flat with bludgeoning waves of Force, brutally dismantling her consciousness and peeling it away one strip at a time until all that was left was a shell.

This time though, she pushed back, hard.

In terms of raw power he was the stronger of the two of them, his knowledge of the Force honed and sharpened by nearly eight decades of experience. But she was not the adversary he expected and had prepared for, and – as Revan had always been at pains to drum into her – raw power mattered far less than the effectiveness with which you could bring it to bear against your opponent. Just the same as with any other form of battle.

Seconds stretched into minutes. The only sounds were those of their breathing; the occasional quiet moan or gasp of effort. There was nothing external to see as their minds clashed, though the air seemed almost to bleed with all of the Force that was being channelled. Morrigance's robes stirred softly around her body in a nonexistent wind, and occasionally sparks of latent static would flash across the metal skeleton of Auza's walker. Eventually they reached impasse, and – by mutual consent – drew back slightly, readying themselves for the next offensive.

He stared at her. "You have grown stronger than I'd imagined, Elleste." The words were ragged as he panted, struggling to catch his breath. Sweat was rolling down his bloated face. "A pity you were foolish enough to try to challenge me. All that potential, wasted so young, before it could truly flower." He gestured, then snapped, "Celyanda!"

Incandescent silver-white lightsabers ignited in stereo. The golden twins strode forward, lithe and graceful.

So that was that. Morrigance could feel the gleeful avidity with which Auza watched her, waiting to see her cut down. She made no attempt either to flee, or fight.

Lightsabers lifted in unison, poised to strike . . .

Then, abruptly, they snapped off. Celyanda fell into step with her, flanking her placidly.

Auza's shock and confusion were palpable. "Celyanda! I gave you an order!"

"You never did truly take the time to try and understand them on anything other than a superficial level, did you, my Lord? They were always just a convenient tool."

His eyes flicked from them to her; back again. "Elleste . . ." His mouth worked, and suddenly she could sense desperation from him. Naked fear. The walker shifted, joints whispering pneumatically as he sent mental commands to it. "My apprentice . . ."

"My name is not Elleste. And I have never – not for a single second – been your apprentice."

_Help me free him, my friend_.

A passage opened in the seemingly solid stone at Auza's back, ready for him to flee into.

Too late. An ion storm, created out of Celyanda's combined will, crackled around the walker. Its electric systems fried, and its limbs locked tight, rendering it as motionless as a statue.

-s-s-

"Okay, that's enough." Carth grabbed hold of the Twi'lek woman's arm. "We need to talk. Now."

Sindra whirled on him, baring her teeth. "Does this look like a good place for a conversation to you?"

They were in one of the narrow, winding alleyways sculpted out of the single giant crystal that was the city of Calius saj Leeloo. Less than fifty metres away tourists and street traders thronged along a major thoroughfare, though the spot where they stood was quiet and shaded. For the moment, it looked like they'd shaken off their pursuers – at least temporarily.

"Right now it'll do for me." He tried to sound menacing, but it wasn't really his forte. "I want to know who you really are, who you work for, and how the hell you know about me."

She met his gaze steadily, apparently not the least bit menaced. With her smudged and sweat-streaked make-up, she looked rather different from when she'd been playing the vampish seductress. For want of a better word, a lot more innocent. Then, clearly and enunciated with the utmost care, she reeled off a phrase that was so bizarre a non-sequitur it made Carth blink.

He repeated it back before it finally clicked. After a second or so, he added, "And in Hoth this time of year the tauntauns are migrating south."

"That is not the proper response," she stated frostily.

"No it's not, but I'm getting very tired of these Force-damned spy games." Carth sighed and released his grip on her arm. She took a couple of steps back from him. "So, if you're Republic Intelligence, what were you trying to do at the party? It was hardly helping. We're supposed to be on the same side, right?"

The look she directed his way seemed slightly pitying, though not really in a cruel way. "Chief Tray'deya was . . . concerned you might get yourself into trouble."

Section Chief Tray'deya was a rather elderly and extremely distinguished looking Bothan spymaster. Carth had met him a couple of days ago, when he'd first arrived on Berchest. Tray'deya had warned him in no uncertain terms not to get involved in matters that didn't concern him, and to leave the intelligence business to the professionals. As relationships went, it hadn't exactly been love at first sight.

And he'd been damned if he was going to let himself be immediately sidelined again. "So what? Because I stuck his nose out of joint he was trying to sabotage me . . ."

"No Carth," she interrupted. "He was trying to stop you getting yourself killed. Aside from your potential to cause trouble, I don't think he liked the idea of losing a genuine war hero on his watch. Even a Gamorrean-ignorant one who refused to listen to helpful advice. I was assigned to keep you distracted and out of harms way."

He felt himself flushing. It was mainly embarrassment. "Hey, I wasn't doing so badly."

"No?"

The flush deepened. "I got in, didn't I?"

"And _that_ was very nicely done." She smiled, though it was quickly sublimated. "But let's be honest, shall we, Carth? When it comes down to it, you're a pretty hopeless spy."

"Hopeless? Oh, come on. I thought I was slightly better than hopeless. The Corellian accent alone . . ."

She cut him off. "When I mentioned the word 'Fleet' you might as well have held up a big sign saying 'I've got something to hide'. And if you're going to go under an assumed name, like Valdan Mayer for instance, you need to answer to it when someone speaks to you. Even when something slightly unexpected happens."

He grunted, trying and failing to come up with an adequate counter to that.

"Now can we get moving?" Her gaze flicked sideways, back down the shadowy alley. "Just because we can't see any of them right now doesn't mean they've stopped looking for us."

As she started walking briskly again, he followed after her. "Who are 'they' anyway?" There was a grimness to his tone as he spoke, his expression tightly set.

Sindra delayed fractionally before responding, looking around in a manner that suggested she expected to find someone watching them. "Sith. Exchange. Any one of several other rather dubious organisations Daxar dealt with. All of them are ruthless enough to kill him if they thought he'd become a liability."

But the timing, along with utter, ruthless disregard for life strongly suggested Sith. Carth didn't need to be a genius to work that one out.

They made the safe house about half an hour later. It consisted of a couple of cramped rooms located above a boarded-up shop shoved halfway down a narrow side-street in one of Calius saj Leeloo's less salubrious districts.

As soon as everything was locked and secured behind them, the closed-circuit monitoring and alarm systems switched on, Sindra collapsed into an old and shabby chair. After a moment, she let out a long, sighing breath and doubled over. Little tremors shuddered through her.

"Sindra?" He moved across to where she sat. His hand hovered, several inches above her shoulder, unsure and wavering. "Are you hurt?"

"Sorry. Sorry." Her voice was muffled. "It's just . . . I've seen people die before. This is not my first day on the job. But that . . ." She made a hollow sound that approximately aped a laugh, but was nothing remotely of the sort. "That I wasn't ready for."

He did touch her shoulder this time.

She didn't shrug him off, and the shaking slowly subsided. "I suppose from all the things you'll have seen, you're much more used to that kind of thing than me. I don't mean to come over all . . ." She trailed off and shook her head, head tails flicking apologetically.

Carth hesitated over his words. "You shouldn't feel sorry. Quite the opposite. I think if you ever, ever start getting used to something like that then it's about time to consider eating your blaster." Thinking about all the bodies – the screams of the dying; the remorseless cacophony of blaster shots – stirred a kind of dull, nauseated rage. He struggled to push it away.

Sindra drew in a deep, shuddering breath and sat up again. After a moment or two, she gently lifted Carth's hand away from her shoulder and stood up. As she looked round, her face appeared calm, almost as serene as a Jedi's. "Thank you."

"Sindra . . ." he started, before stopping again, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, that's not your real name is it? Any more than I'm called Valdan Mayer."

"Sindra is fine. It's what you're used to calling me. You might as well continue."

The response left him somewhat taken aback. "I think I'd rather know your real name."

"Why? It hardly matters, does it? Besides, I've had so many names that the real one is just another in a long string." She made a vague, dismissive gesture and started walking towards the door leading to the other room. She actually seemed genuinely uncomfortable.

He sighed, exasperated. "Fine. Sindra it is." He realised that he'd completely lost track of what he'd intended to ask. "I'll just assume your real name is something too embarrassing to mention."

She snorted, but the way she did it made him think he'd hit the nail on the head. "Bliss." It was bitten out.

"Bliss," he echoed.

"Laugh and I break your arm. Use it again and I break something a lot more intimate than that." It was very difficult to tell if she was being serious or not.

"So, um, Sindra then. Nice name that." He followed her through into the other room. Immediately she walked across to a wardrobe, selected a plain black jumpsuit, and started to take her dress off, apparently not caring in the slightest that he was there watching her.

He turned away, stifling a choking cough, and beat a hasty retreat. Underneath the dress, there hadn't been a whole lot of anything except naked yellow skin.

Her laughter followed him. "You know Carth, if you don't do something to prove otherwise, I'm going to start thinking you're a prude."

Unaccountably he felt his cheeks warming at the accusation. "I'm not a . . ." he stopped himself. _No, no. Not going anywhere near there_. "And there I was beginning to think Sindra's personality was just an act."

He heard the sonic shower unit switch on and sat himself down in one of the chairs. After a second or so, her voice floated back to him, "You know, I really was planning to play her a bit more subtly than that, but when I saw the way you were reacting I just couldn't help it. It was just too tempting to resist. The look on your face when I . . ."

"I was wondering if I could push you over the railing into the sea without anyone around us noticing."

Another laugh. "Of course."

"So, what would have happened if I'd let myself succumb to Sindra's charms? For a moment there I was almost tempted." He attempted to tease back.

There was a slight delay before a response came back. "Sindra Taran owns an extremely luxurious penthouse apartment with a truly spectacular view of the Sarybanic Arch. I dare say we'd have spent an exhausting, but otherwise extremely enjoyable night going at it like sex-starved Gizka in mating season, and we'd have parted in the morning, neither of us any the worse for it." Her tone suddenly became more serious, verging on bleak. "It would certainly have been a damn sight more enjoyable than this."

He could hardly argue with that part of her assessment. Something about the rest of her words nagged at him though. "And that wouldn't have bothered you at all?"

The sonic shower switched off – quick, efficient, no time wasted. "It would hardly have been one of the more onerous duties I've had to perform in the service. Put it that way."

"Duties?" He knew it was a mistake even as he said it, but something in him wasn't quite able to let it pass.

There was an exasperated sigh. "Look Carth, you're a good looking man. Even with that ridiculous blonde hair. And it wasn't as though anybody ordered me to go out and seduce you. It was merely a convenient, and potentially fun, way of getting the job done."

"Oh."

"Oh?" She walked back into the room, finishing zipping up the front of her jumpsuit. With the make-up gone, she looked considerably younger than he'd first guessed. Too young. Or maybe he was just getting too old. "This bothers you, doesn't it?"

"No, no. It doesn't bother me in the slightest," he said quickly.

She made an exasperated noise, head tails wriggling in displeasure. "Yes it does. It quite clearly bothers you a great deal. Otherwise, you wouldn't have said anything in the first place. And you wouldn't have that tight-arsed expression you've got now."

He kept his mouth shut, holding back the instinctive denial about the 'tight-arsed expression', and hoping that she'd let the matter drop.

She didn't. In fact, she seemed genuinely irritated. "What it about the thought of two people having hypothetical, utterly meaningless sex? Where's the problem?" Carth had come to know Mission well enough to get a fair idea of what various Twi'lek head tail gestures and postures meant. Sindra's were definitely conveying highly pissed-off. "Do you want to know that I've slept with people for no other reason than because my job demands it from time to time? Because I have. And I'll undoubtedly do so again if the need arises in future. And you know what? I'm not ashamed about it. I don't have any self-esteem issues about it, and I'm still entirely comfortable with myself as a person. If that makes me . . . I don't know, some kind of whore in your eyes, then you're the one who has the problem. Not me."

"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I'm not judging you or anything."

She glared at him. "But you are. If I were a man, you wouldn't be bothered in the slightest. It wouldn't even be a question."

"If you were a man I think I'd have found your performance back at Daxar's place even more disconcerting."

Suddenly she laughed, though it sounded slightly forced. Some of the more obvious tension in her had bled away. She walked across to one of the darkened windows, staring down at the narrow side street outside. "I'm sorry. I don't know where all that came from." She shook her head, head tails flicking. "I'm not usually quite so . . . hysterical. Bad day I suppose."

He nodded. "Very bad day. Though a hell of a lot worse for some people than us."

A visible shudder passed up her back. After a moment, she looked back at him, entirely business-like. "You need to change your clothes." Her nose wrinkled as she moved closer to him. "And take a shower while you're at it. You stink."

When he returned a few minutes later, considerably refreshed, Sindra was doing something with the necklace she'd worn as part of her outfit. It was hooked up, via a pair of micro-fine connecting wires, to a datapad. As he looked over her shoulder, he saw that the datapad's screen depicted the face of the woman from the party.

"Do you know who she is then?" he asked.

She didn't look up from what she was doing. The woman's face was abruptly superimposed with a wire-mesh grid that created a three-dimensional mapping. As it rotated, the heavy mask of make-up was stripped away, leaving something that was much more recognisably human looking. Someone Carth might be able to recognise if he saw her in the street. "If you want the straightforward answer, her name is Yolanda Wintour. I was introduced to her briefly at the party, and apparently she's been Jerstyl Daxar's personnel assistant – which could mean almost anything – for the past six months."

"And the non-straightforward answer?"

"Republic Intelligence knows nothing about a Yolanda Wintour – at least as far as they're telling me. I'd never heard of her before the party, and Chief Tray'deya isn't usually lax with his briefings. So your guess is as good as mine."

Which, by Carth's reckoning, probably meant Sith, Exchange, or one of the other organisations Sindra had mentioned implicitly earlier on. Or . . . "She could have shot us, and she warned us about the assassins coming up behind us. Could she be Republic Intel? I mean, if you were assigned to keeping me out of trouble you must be fairly junior, and probably well outside of the need-to-know chain."

"You know, Carth, the foot in mouth thing is endearing enough the first few times, but unlike the Corellian brandy you were drinking earlier, it doesn't age well."

He could probably have phrased it more tactfully, he realised, but didn't feel inclined to apologise.

After a lengthy pause, she added, "It's possible, I suppose. Not being shot by someone is rather a low standard for assuming friendship and common purpose though." She continued working on the image, before making a frustrated noise. "I think I'd find this a lot easier without you peering over my shoulder the whole time."

_Fine_. Carth turned away and wandered to the window. The street outside looked deserted. Nervous tension filled him, and it was difficult to relax even slightly. "So how does a nice girl like you get into this line of business?"

"You've been out of circulation for a while, haven't you? That line needs carbon-dating." It wasn't said unkindly though. She muttered something that sounded like a curse beneath her breath, apparently directed at the datapad. "I never intended to get involved in intelligence work, if that's what you mean. I was always going to be this big holo star. Rich, famous, beautiful and adored by all." She let out a breath "A silly little girls dream." A grunt of concentration followed, accompanied by more sub-audible muttering. "Can you believe I thought this might be glamorous and exciting when the recruiting agent approached me? It certainly wasn't that I was especially patriotic."

"Get to see more of the big wide galaxy than your humdrum little home world." A half smile touched Carth's lips as he recalled a certain shockingly naïve and wet behind the ears eighteen year old.

"You too, huh?"

"Oh, I got other, much better reasons later on."

Sindra made a satisfied noise. "There. Done. Hopefully our side can pick her up before the assassins if she tries to pass through a spaceport . . ." She trailed off as she tried her comm. unit, eliciting only a squall of static, then swore venomously. "Damn it. We're being jammed."

Which meant . . .

Carth caught a flicker of movement down on the street. Instinct took over, and he managed to duck fractionally before the window next to him exploded inwards in a shower of glass shards.

-s-s-

Yuthura was bent over a workbench. The hilt of a lightsaber was held steady by her cast-covered right arm, while she probed somewhat tentatively at its inner workings with a pair of tweezers held in her left.

She apparently sensed him standing back in the doorway, watching her. "Developing a personal attachment to a lightsaber has to be the height of idiocy, wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, I don't know. I've done plenty of more stupid things, even in the time I can properly remember." Tamar managed to smile, surprising himself. He had felt much like smiling at all these past few hours.

"I'd had it nearly seven years. You get used to the way it feels. It just seems . . . kind of an ignominious way to lose it, I suppose. This one still doesn't seem quite right somehow."

"And red does clash so horribly with purple," he added, deadpan.

"And there we hit my real reasons for leaving the Sith. Horrible fashion sense." Though he couldn't see much of her face from this angle, and her head tails were completely still as she concentrated on her work, he got the sense that she was amused. "I managed to scrounge a crystal off Jolee."

"And escaped without getting your ear talked off? I'm impressed."

"I never said that now, did I?" She looked briefly round at him. "We had a lengthy conversation, ostensibly on the merits of various forms of dance. He was quite impassioned on the subject of various Wookiee reels."

Tamar winced in mock sympathy. "How are you feeling?"

When they'd found her, she'd looked half-dead on her feet: scarcely able to stand, dehydrated and feverish, repeatedly wracked by coughing that hurt just to listen to, blood misting on her breath. The sight of her like that had left him terrified. His and Jolee's combined healing talents had managed to stabilise her somewhat and ease her breathing, but as soon as they'd gotten her strapped into the co-pilots seat of the _Ajunta's Blade,_ she'd slid into a healing trance and hadn't stirred from it for somewhere over three days. After they'd evaded the Republic cordon, it had been a very cramped and anxious flight for Tamar, watching her unconscious form and wrestling his emotions.

"It's nice to be able to breathe in without it hurting." Her attention turned back to the lightsaber in front of her. "The arm will take a bit longer before the bone knits fully, and I got rather a stern lecture from Jedi Belaya over the permanent damage I could do if I break it again in the near future. Otherwise? Nearly as good as new again."

She still hadn't told him what had happened beyond the sketchiest of outlines. He got the impression though, that it had affected her much more than she was letting on – more than simply the physical injuries. "That's good."

Yuthura made a small, satisfied noise and put the tweezers down. After snapping the cover back into place, she stood up. For a few seconds she appeared to be testing the hilt's balance, then she ignited it, a brilliant violet coloured blade-beam springing forth. She made a few practise swings. "There. Much better, don't you think?"

He laughed. There eyes met, and the brief levity faded.

"I agree with your decision," she said at length.

About Mission. Finding out that Juhani and Zaalbar were still alive, and being reunited with them should have been a relief. With the news they delivered about Mission though, it had almost been the opposite. Before, with only the sketchiest news available, he'd been able to imagine them working together, safe within his head. Now that luxury was gone.

He grunted. "I'm still not sure I do. As a Jedi . . ."

"As a Jedi you've made your choice. And you have no intention of going back on it, right?" Her gaze, meeting his, was unflinching.

"No." His voice sounded flat when he finally answered her.

"Then stop tormenting yourself about it."

_Easy enough to say_, he thought sourly.

A pair of Republic personal walked in on them. "Let's go somewhere," Yuthura said quietly, after a pause.

The look in her eyes made him slightly uncomfortable somehow, but he nodded. They started walking together, side by side, out of the gunship's repair bay towards the crew quarters.

A couple of minutes later, the door to his quarters slid open in front of them. It was slightly less commodious than the prison cell he'd had on Coruscant, the curve of the hull restricting headroom uncomfortably. The lighting was a seriously unpleasant shade of yellow, and gave off a low electric humming noise, flickering intermittently.

He offered Yuthura the lone chair with a distracted gesture, then perched himself on the edge of the bunk.

Finally, she spoke again. "You wouldn't be the person you are if you didn't do this. I think it's probably the main thing that separates you from the old Revan. To you, the smaller things matter too. Besides, it's not as though you're dropping all your responsibilities to chase blindly after your friend. Until we get the data core decrypted its not as if we have a surfeit of leads to chase down, is it?"

He didn't say anything, so she continued. "Dreya's Bastion is a good play. Even Marshall didn't object to it. Two birds with one stone – that's the saying, right?"

"Except I don't give a damn about the data core right now. Or the Jedi council. Or the Republic. Or her – Morrigance Fel or Elleste Strine, or whoever she really is." What he kept coming back, time and time again, was Mission.

"Damn it, you're annoying."

"Yes," he agreed. His voice was utterly bland and emotionless.

"No one is disagreeing with you here. No one."

"Then maybe they should be."

Yuthura's exhalation was freighted with exasperation. She stood up, the back of her head scraping against the ceiling. For a moment, he thought she was going to walk out, but instead she sat down on the bunk next to him. She didn't saying anything straight away, apparently weighing something up.

Finally, she settled on, "Get your head out of your ass, Tamar. It isn't very becoming"

He blinked, startled as much by the tone of her voice as anything. When he looked at her face, it was stern and unsympathetic – echoes of the headmistress of the Korriban academy prepared to chastise a recalcitrant pupil. It felt almost like he'd been slapped. "I mean, what is it you want exactly? You want someone to tell you all this is your fault? Would that make you feel better – more able to enjoy wallowing in your guilt if everyone else blames you too?"

His first instinct was angry denial – to snap back at her that she didn't know what she was talking about. He didn't though. He said nothing.

Silence lingered. The lights flickered.

"This is pointless. Stop searching for things to punish yourself over." Her voice was slightly softer this time. "Sometimes there are no perfect choices."

Finally, he let out a breath. She was definitely right on one thing. This was accomplishing nothing. He managed a low chuckle. "Okay, Yuthura. Head. Out of ass. Is that better?"

She peered closely at him, and after a moment made a small noncommittal noise. "Possibly. I'll reserve judgement." Her hand lightly touched his though, indicating that he was forgiven.

This time the silence that settled in was considerably less tense.

"Tamar?"

"Yes, Yuthura?"

"A purely academic observation, you understand. But I note that this room appears to have both a bed and a lock on the door."

He looked at her face. It was perfectly impassive. His gaze dropped slightly. "Your arm . . .?"

"Is not essential to the process, as I understand it."

-s-s-

Carth shot his assailant in the face at point-blank range. The man slumped backwards, against the wall, and slid slowly down it to the floor, hair smouldering.

His heart was hammering as he looked around. Sweat ran down the side of his face, and he could feel the muscles in his legs burning with lactic acid build-up. There was no sign of movement and everything was, for the moment, quiet. Four bodies lay sprawled across the narrow street, unmoving.

Up through the narrow gap between the rooftops the sky showed that night had settled in. It was still bright enough to see fairly clearly, the orange lights of Calius saj Leeloo reflecting back off low clouds. It did indicate that they'd been on the run for several hours now, though.

Their flight had come to assume the proportions of a nightmare, their attackers seemingly endless in number, impossible to outrun and herding them relentlessly. Several times, it had looked like they'd gotten themselves surrounded, but each time up to now they'd managed to slip the jaws of the trap just barely. Once, that had involved kicking the door of the nearest house down and running through a family in the middle of eating dinner. Another occasion had seen a mad scramble up a fire escape, followed by a desperate sprint across exposed crystal rooftops, making vertiginous leaps from building to building.

And always the attackers kept coming, able to find and follow them no matter what they tried.

Part of him had struggled to comprehend how this could be happening. The Berchest he remembered had been a peaceful and orderly place, extensively and visibly policed for the benefit of the myriad tourists. That though, apparently, had changed.

When he'd made some breathless comment to that effect, Sindra had given him a rather pitying look and told him that he obviously hadn't been keeping abreast of local politics. They'd been too busy running for any more in depth conversation on the subject.

Abruptly Carth realised that he was alone. Sindra wasn't with him any more.

He hissed her name, but there was no response. Neither was she anywhere in sight, either ahead of him, or back in the direction they'd just come. "Damn it woman." Cursing beneath his breath, he began to retrace his steps, gaze darting this way and that, searching for more lurking assailants. His nerves felt sliced raw.

He found her several minutes later after retracing back about a hundred metres, around a corner in the mouth of an alleyway scarcely wide enough to accommodate two people walking abreast. She was slumped on her haunches, her back pressed against the wall, with her head forward in her in hands. Her head tails quivered intermittently.

At the sound of his approach, she looked up, pointing her gun at him. Its barrel wavered, and her eyes look wild and unfocused.

"It's me," he started, taking a step towards her. "Carth," he added when no sign of recognition showed.

She fired.

He yelped in shock, the blaster shot passing about thirty centimetres past his ear.

Raising his hands, he stepped back, heart thudding wildly. "Easy, Sindra. Easy."

Her gaze still seemed blank. Her finger tightened on the trigger. "Bliss?" he tried.

Finally her eyes focused on his face, recognition dawning. "Told you not to call me that." Her voice sounded shockingly weak and blurred. The gun barrel dropped. "Bloody parents. Should need a licence before you're allowed to name a child."

He hurried across to her, falling to his knees beside her. "What happened?" Idiotic question, he knew even as he said it.

She managed a pained looking expression that was meant to be a smile. "They got me."

As she shifted slightly he was able to see where the left leg of her jumpsuit had been burned through. Underneath, the meat of her thigh was raw and burned, seeping clear fluid. He swallowed as he looked at it – a bad hit, which, from the look of it, had sent her into shock. The leg certainly wouldn't be able to take her weight as things stood.

He started fumbling in his pockets and after a second or so produced a kolto pack. "Here, take this."

"Carth, get the hell out of here."

"Listen, lady." As he helped her inject the kolto, she made a low groaning noise, shuddering. "I've never abandoned anyone on a mission before. I'm not about to start now."

"Not even for someone as irritating as me?" As the effect of the kolto hit, she seemed to recover fractionally, her eyes becoming more alert and the shaking subsiding fractionally.

"Not even then."

She closed her eyes briefly, head tilting backwards against the wall. "I can't walk, Carth."

He started looking round the alleyway. "If we can improvise some kind of splint . . ."

"Carth!"

He looked back at her. She'd shifted position, grimacing with the effort, allowing him to see the second blaster wound she'd taken, this one to the abdomen.

Gut wounds weren't as bad for Twi'leks as humans. He couldn't remember where he'd heard that. He had no idea if it was true, but he clung to it. "You're what, sixty kilos? I can carry you."

Her strangled laugh trailed off into a pained gasp. She tapped her ear. "We're still being jammed. Which means there are more of them still in the vicinity. You can't carry me and run. You can't carry me and shoot."

"Then I'll get you to somewhere we can lie low." His voice held a stubborn obstinacy.

She bared her teeth. They were bloody from where she'd accidentally bitten her bottom lip when she'd been shot. "Get a grip, Carth." She swallowed, obviously struggling, fumbling at one of her pockets. "Take this." She thrust the datapad into his hands. "Get it to Tray'deya, or . . . whatever."

He still hesitated. Something was clenching up inside him.

"Just take it, damn it."

He accepted it numbly. "Sindra . . ."

She lifted a hand to his lips to shush him. "Listen, all that self-sacrifice for the good of the Republic crap? Really not into it, in a big a way. I still want to be a holo star." She groaned, clearly in considerable pain, and it was several seconds before she could continue. Then she tapped something attached to her belt. "I've got this . . . stealth unit. Draw the bastards away from me. I can stay hidden. When you've got them out of jamming range I'll call in . . . get medical help."

His eyes met with hers. Her expression was almost challenging, daring him to argue with her. "If you're ever in the vicinity again . . . feel like helping a bored, neglected millionaire's wife keep herself entertained for a couple of nights . . ."

"I'll look you up," he agreed, managing an approximation of a smile.

She flicked a switch on the stealth unit, fading to nothing than a faint, blurring outline in the air, like heat haze.

"Now get lost."

-s-s-

She heard the footsteps hurry on past her down the alleyway, voices fading as they turned round a corner and away. Finally, she allowed herself to breathe out again. The pain from her injured gut was chronic, making it difficult to think straight. She could feel sweat pouring from her, trickling down her back, icy cold against burning hot skin. The back of her throat felt cracked and parched, and the craving for something to drink – the merest sip of water – was like a form of delirium. The idea of biting into her wrist and sucking up the blood that spilled out – anything to gain to the slightest hint of moisture – was strangely seductive.

An involuntary groan emerged. Her foot drummed against the floor of the alley. The words she'd told Carth began to seem more and more like lies.

She realised that she was scared. Utterly terrified.

"My poor, poor, pretty little bird."

The voice made her freeze, deep and rich in timbre. She looked up and saw a figure standing in the mouth of the alley. Her vision was too blurred to make out more than the vaguest detail – a tall, dark outline. It stepped towards her.

Her hand fumbled for the controls of the stealth unit in confusion, but it was still switched on. She lifted her blaster, trying to stop the barrel trembling – blinked the stinging sweat out of her eyes as she struggled to aim.

Except now there were three identical figures, striding side by side.

She fired. Hit the middle figure. The blaster bolt passed straight on through and out the other side.

The remaining two figures chuckled and gestured. She felt something tugging hard at her blaster, jerking it from her grasp.

"Wait." The word stopped in her throat though. There was only one figure again now, and it stopped in front of her, leaning over.

Its face hovered over her, handsome and dark-skinned, white teeth gleaming as they smiled warmly.

"Please . . ." She reached up, not sure if she was reaching out to him, or trying to push him away.

The pain flared briefly, blotting everything else out. Dimly she was aware of someone – herself – crying out. As her gaze darkened a brief afterimage lingered – a thread of burning orange energy, drawn from the centre of her chest, leaping to his outstretched hand.

"Rest now."

Her eyes glazed over. Everything slipped away.

-s-s-

The Sith assassin, known sometimes as the Catcher, remained crouched over her body for several minutes. If anyone had been around to witness the scene, they would have felt extremely uneasy indeed. Like they were intruding on some kind of strange and darkly forbidding communion.

"Thank you," he murmured, lifting his forehead from where it had been pressed tight against hers, before finally standing up. "You will not be forgotten."

Almost regretfully, he walked away.

Images played behind his eyes. A face. A spoor, leading away into the night.

-s-s-

Korda Drace pulled the dark robe closed over his broad, barrel chest and struggled to assume a façade of composure. Anger thrummed through his powerfully built frame. A heavy, calloused hand scratched back and forth through the short, still damp hairs of his copper-coloured beard, producing a harsh, scraping noise. The tattoos on the skin beneath his eyes glowed like livid bruises, starkly contrasting to the pallor of his surrounding complexion.

The private comm. link beeped again, insistently. He would have simply switched it off unanswered, except for the source tag it carried. Darth Auza.

"One day, you rancid sack of blubber. One day we'll come face to face without your legions and your bodyguards . . ." His expression smoothed over from snarl to stony calm with a chilling rapidity. Only

Drace's faded blue eyes gave the lie to his pretence of impassivity.

He flicked a switch. "My Lord Auza." He bowed his head the minimum possible distance in a shallow pretence of respect. "How may I serve? The hour here on Korriban is late . . ."

It wasn't Auza's grotesquely corpulent visage that looked back at him over the holo-link. Instead, it was a much more slender figure, whose face was hidden beneath a deep cowl.

"Lord Drace." The voice was female, utterly bland and emotionless. "I trust the evening finds you well?"

"It is nearer to morning." His eyes narrowed as he studied the holo-image. "You're Strine. The Lord Auza's current apprentice. Does your master know that you use his private comm. channel?"

"That is an interesting philosophical question. The Jedi Order, for instance, would probably say yes."

"My patience is short Strine. What do you want?"

The cowled head dipped in a perfunctory bow. "My apologies, Lord Drace. However, I thought you would want to hear this news at the very first opportunity."

"What news?" he gritted.

"The news that Lord Auza has sadly passed away."

Drace's surface of impassivity fractured. He stared at the hologram, trying to work out if he was being played. "You're saying that Darth Auza is dead."

"That is indeed the usual meaning of 'passed away'."

"How?" Drace started pacing, a hand coming up to scratch at his beard again. "How did he die?"

"My Lord Auza was an elderly man, in poor health as you know. I'm sure you'll be glad to hear he went peacefully, in his sleep."

Drace's eyes narrowed. The voice was as bland as ever, but he was certain he was being mocked by it. "Precisely how peacefully?"

"I believe he peacefully dismembered himself into twelve separate pieces. Possibly whilst in the throws of a bad dream. At least he led a long and full life, which is something I'm sure we all aspire to."

He grunted noncommittally. His thoughts were suddenly a whirr, tumbling over themselves with the number and scope of possibilities that were presented if this news was correct. _If_, he reminded himself. "How many others know of this?"

"As of this moment? Myself, one other disinterested party, and now you."

It was too good to be true. Which meant it couldn't be. His lip curled. "Why are you telling me this, Strine? What advantage accrues to you?"

There was a delay before a response came. "My reasons are my own."

"Not good enough." He peered at the hooded figure, but the image in front of him gave nothing up. "And while you're at it, let me see your face. I want to know who I'm really talking to."

"Would you know the face of Elleste Strine, even if you saw it?" The voice sounded amused.

"You are not her."

"Oh, very good. Better than Auza ever managed, at least."

He could hear the sarcasm clearly. "I do not enjoy being toyed with . . ."

"Stow your temper, Drace." All pretence at respect was gone, the voice with an edge like monomolecular-bonded plasteel. "You now have, in your sole possession, information that delivers unto you an entire half of the Sith Empire. Yes, of course I don't do this out of the goodness of my heart. Yes, of course I am manipulating you. But does that honestly matter, given the prize you gain?"

He said nothing. Beneath the surface fury bubbled.

"And yes, if I was standing in front of you, you'd rip my heart straight out from my chest and crush it as I watch. In eight to twelve hours, this information will become public knowledge. I can think of at least half a dozen who will then try to steal Auza's vacated throne. In the ensuing carnage, while the squabbles still go on, Lord Malefic is in by far the best position to take advantage, making himself the sole successor to Darth Malak, and supreme ruler of the Sith Empire. And I know that you above anyone, Lord Drace, cannot afford for that to happen."

"If we ever meet in person . . ."

"There will be a reckoning." She let out a bored sounding sigh. "How very tedious of you. Now, I have said all I have to say. Do with it what you will."

The hologram vanished, the comm. link shutting off.

Korda Drace stood motionless for several seconds, staring away at something that existed only inside his own head. Then he turned away and went to work.


	9. The Exchange

**9. The Exchange**

Outside the transparisteel window a blizzard howled, the hurricane force Hoth winds thick with ice and snow that reduced visibility to the low tens of metres. Inside the battle-scarred Republic base, the temperature may have been have been somewhat warmer, but the atmosphere, Bastila thought, was – if possible – even more chill.

"The news of Jedi Zikl's death is indeed most distressing," Master Mida Tapawan murmured. The colour-drained holographic image of her, possibly even more hunched and frail than the last time they had spoken, flickered erratically as a particularly strong gust of wind moaned mournfully and shook the base's transmission tower. "But we must not regard it as tragic. As you say, he died a hero's death, serving the will of the Force that he has now become a part of. I will be sure to, as you request, pass on your condolences and respects to his surviving family members."

Bastila couldn't escape the disturbing impression that Master Mida was simply mouthing words she could no longer bring herself to entirely believe in. "Thank you, Master."

_Or perhaps I am simply projecting my own doubts onto her._

"But, moving on from such solemn matters, as we inevitably must. It is good that you have chosen this time to contact us. One might even be tempted to say that the convenience of your timing is an indication that the Force remains with us, even in these most trying of times."

"Oh?" Bastila managed weakly. She wasn't immediately sure why, but she didn't like the sound of that at all. She suppressed a shiver. The Republic base may have been vastly warmer than outside, but by any objective measure, it was still damn cold.

"Indeed. I was about to try to contact you myself, Jedi Bastila. The Council has decided . . ."

"The Council?" Bastila blurted, unable to help herself.

Master Mida looked distinctly irritated by the interruption. "Indeed, Jedi Bastila. The Council. Even the heinous atrocity committed so recently against our order cannot weaken the Jedi's resolve to serve the Force's will. Nor can it weaken our proud millennia old tradition of service to the galaxy." Her voice fluctuated as another wind gust hit. "It would be an insult to the memories of those who were so brutally slain if we allowed that to be the case. Under the wise guidance of Master Corva-Dey, a new provisional Council of Masters has been gathered to Coruscant."

A pause, lasting several beats.

"That is indeed most heartening news." It should have been heartening, anyway. For some reason that she couldn't pinpoint, Bastila struggled to feel particularly heartened. The name Corva-Dey was naggingly familiar, but she failed to immediately place it. Somehow, it struck a false note.

"Indeed. Master Corva-Dey has been leading negotiations with the Senate, and cautious progress is being made in regard to our differences. For the moment, the bill put forth by Senator Gallavon has been kept off the table." There was a crackle of interference, the Jedi Master's voice distorting.

"Anyway, as I was trying to say before I was interrupted; the Council has decided that you are to be recalled to Coruscant, Jedi Bastila. With immediate effect."

"M-Master Mida?" It felt like she'd just been punched in the gut.

"Is there something you fail to understand, Jedi Bastila? I thought the meaning of my words was clear enough." A querulous note crept in.

For several seconds Bastila struggled to formulate a reply. "You received my report?" she finally managed, rather lamely.

"Indeed I did." The elderly Jedi Master's expression looked suitably grim. "Most grave, if it is accurate. I have passed the matter on to the new Council for urgent attention."

Bastila closed her mouth and swallowed, the legs of the argument she'd been going to use immediately undercut by Master Mida's response. She struggled to find some composure, sure that there must have been some kind of mistake somewhere. "And I am still to be recalled? If Darth Malefic is seeking to follow Revan's path, then surely it must be a matter of highest priority to ensure this is not allowed to happen?" She took a deep breath, all too aware that her voice was rising in pitch in a manner that made her sound more than a little hysterical. "Whatever other difficulties we are facing, surely you must agree we cannot afford to ignore what is going on out at . . ."

"Jedi Bastila," Master Mida interrupted firmly. "The council are giving your report serious consideration. However, you surely understand that they cannot spring into action immediately, purely on your say so."

"Might I know if other Jedi are being sent out to take my place with the taskforce, at the very least?"

Definite annoyance flashed across Master Mida's face. "I'm sure that the Council will do what _they_ determine to be wise. When it is most appropriate."

"But . . ."

"Have you considered the possibility that the information you've received, much of it from the fallen Jedi, Derren Horvath, is a deliberate ruse, to distract the attention of the Order from what is truly important at this time – namely, the matter of our very existence? What could be better for our enemies than to have us distracted by a phantom threat, swallowed unquestioningly by the more credulous among us, chasing after it until we fall into extinction?"

"Master Mida, I am certain this is far more than simply a phantom threat. There is compelling evidence . . ."

"Jedi Bastila, please." Master Mida held up a hand to stop her.

So in other words, that would be a no. No one was being sent to replace her. Bastila felt numb. If she had tried to imagine the worst possible turn that this conversation could have taken beforehand, she wasn't sure she would have been able to come up with anything remotely this bad. "Can you at least tell me the reasons for my recall?"

Bastila saw more annoyance in the old woman's face. She was expected to drop everything and jump in unquestioning obedience to the new formed Council's will. After all, she had always done so before. "The Council have need of the skills you possess, Jedi Bastila. And it has also been decided that we erred in assigning you to such an isolated and unsupervised posting so soon after your . . . rehabilitation. An extended period of training and guidance, conducted closely under the Council's supervision, has been decided upon. We have been neglectful in that regard, and for that we must apologise."

They wanted her to try to trace Revan through her bond with him, she thought. Of course they did. The only usefulness she had was that and her Battle Meditation. And Battle Meditation wasn't going to be very helpful to anyone on Coruscant right now.

That was what they had been negotiating with the Senate. The realisation felt colder than the air by far.

Ironically, prior to the events of Dromund Kaas, she knew she would probably have jumped at the chance of 'an extended period of training and guidance' under close and constant supervision to help correct all her myriad flaws and failings. But that, she now recognised, had simply been the urge to curl up into a ball and hide from the universe – to find herself a nice and cosy prison, where she didn't have to address what she'd done in any truly meaningful way.

She inclined her head, swallowing – resolving herself. "I will, of course, obey the new Council's will. At the earliest opportunity available to me."

Master Mida nodded, apparently not immediately noticing the ambiguity left by her words. "You are currently on Hoth, yes? I assume that you have access to a fast courier to bring you along the trade spine? I will let the Council know to expect your arrival within three days."

"No."

Master Mida looked startled.

"My apologies to the council, but I shall be slightly longer than that." She could suddenly feel her heart racing, and she was struggling not to hyperventilate, teetering on the edge of an all out panic attack. To her astonishment though, her voice actually managed to sound calm, steady and authoritative. "Sector Fleet Command is sending an expeditionary force into the Daragba system, consisting of our taskforce and a dozen reinforcing capital ships. We depart within the next 24 hours, and expect to there engage with Darth Malefic's forces – and possibly the would-be Dark Lord himself. As I recollect, I was assigned command of the taskforce by yourself. I'm afraid it would be impossible for me to back out at this stage." The fact that Sector Fleet Command were sending in the expeditionary force due to strenuous representations by herself and Captains Organa and Vance was probably not entirely helpful to her case.

"The Council's orders supersede your prior arrangements, Jedi Bastila. I shouldn't need to remind you of that."

"No. No, you don't." Part of her still couldn't believe she was doing this. "However, I'm also fully aware that the Council could not possibly intend for me to abandon my duties at a juncture where there are so many lives left at stake. If the fleet expeditionary force intend to face Darth Malefic, and more especially the artefact he has acquired, my Battle Meditation is going to be essential. Even with its aid we barely made it through our encounter at Tylace, and without Jedi Zikl's sacrifice we surely would not have done."

"Then I strongly suggest that you persuade Fleet command to postpone their attack. It is an absolute priority . . ."

"Has any more information been uncovered concerning the _Flying Kuat_ and its cargo?" Bastila interrupted firmly, trying to buy herself a moment's thinking space – trying to get her thoughts fully ordered and under control, and stop her heart from seeking to hammer its way through her sternum.

Slightly to her surprise, Master Mida answered the question. "Unfortunately it seems that the records of that vessel's manifests have been lost from the archives."

Bastila blinked. She'd been partially prepared for the news that nothing had been found yet, but not this. The idea of the Jedi archives as a vast and inviolate record of every detail of Jedi history was something that had been ingrained in her since childhood. Information did not simply become lost from the archives. "That doesn't strike you as odd, Master Mida?"

"I dare say that anyone looking back at our activities from forty years hence will, regrettably, find rather more in the way of lost and missing information than a simple ship's manifest." She sighed heavily. "Such is the way of things in times of chaos and war."

Abruptly the elderly Jedi Master's expression hardened again. The holographic image wavered violently once more under the effects of another prolonged gust of wind, her voice crackling. "Master Corva-Dey has made a determination that your presence on Coruscant is crucial to forthcoming events. We are not recalling you trivially, or out of spite."

Bastila took a deep breath. "And I have already said that I will obey the summons. _As soon as I am able to_." She could feel her hands sweating as they clenched at her side, despite the cold. "The last time we spoke, you asked me whether or not I was truly a Jedi Knight. Well, you were right to question. I wasn't then, quite clearly. Not even remotely so. I'm not claiming to suddenly have become one overnight, but at least now, I _want_ to be one, and have a better understanding of what it truly means. At least now I can see something of the direction I need to take."

She broke off, trying to moisten her throat, which was becoming dryer by the moment, to the point where she feared it would seize up entirely. "You were right too that a Jedi Knight needs to show responsibility, maturity and personal initiative, rather than blind and unthinking obedience. I have to believe Derren Horvath was utterly wrong when he claimed that all the Jedi Order wants is a legion of unthinking drones to serve its will. So I know you understand absolutely why I _will_ be accompanying the Republic fleet to Daragba. Assuming, Force willing, that everything goes well, I should be delayed in returning to Coruscant by no more than a week or two at most."

Master Mida's lips compressed so tightly they all but disappeared.

Before the Jedi Master could find her voice and issue a direct countermanding order, Bastila exhaled and said, "Good day to you, Master Mida, I thank you sincerely for your wisdom and council. May the Force be with you." Then she severed the comm. link.

She felt giddy; terror and elation at what she'd done filling her in equal measure. Her stomach was turning loops, and an inner voice was asking her if she'd gone insane.

_A Jedi Knight has duties and responsibilities that override blind and unthinking obedience . . _.

The thought trailed off. With sudden cold and crystal clarity, Bastila knew that Revan had once told himself exactly that too. Suddenly she felt acutely sick, and couldn't stop herself shaking.

-s-s-

Kreed could feel her gaze on him from the moment he stepped through the door. Its ferocity was disconcerting, even to a veteran Mandalorian warrior who'd seen more battles, death and bloodshed than he cared to remember.

He hid a grimace; told himself to get a grip.

"Hey blue, how's it going?" He came to a halt in front of Mission's cell. She folded her arms across her chest and ostentatiously turned her back to him, her head tails held absolutely still.

He grunted softly. "Still sulking then? That'll be fifteen days straight. I'm impressed. Little children have a lot of stamina these days."

No reaction. He smiled. "Though someone who's a bit . . . shall we say, quicker of thought, might have concluded that her chosen tactic wasn't working by now. Perhaps you could try screaming until you're sick? I hear that's popular with the spoilt little rich brats. Should persuade Rath to release you in no time. Either that or muzzle you."

He saw a little shiver pass up her spine. Her head tails clenched. Abruptly she whirled on him, hurling a venomous tirade of abuse.

Kreed waited for her to trail off. "Am I supposed to be impressed by your linguistic skills? Or shocked perhaps? Because to be honest, I've heard most of those words before, and they've lost a bit of their novelty value. Still, I'm sure they'd make mummy proud."

For a long time she just looked at him. He looked right back.

"What do you want?" she finally asked.

"Got some news I thought you might want to hear. Or I can just frak off, like you told me to."

"Unless the news is you've all contracted the Iridian plague and are going to die horrible deaths over the next few days, then hey, I think I'll pass."

He chuckled. Her cheeks flushed darker blue – embarrassment and fury. "Like I said, your choice. I thought you might be interested though. It's about your friends, see."

She bit her bottom lip. He could see her interest though. Literally. Through his artificial eye, he could detect abrupt changes in blood flow and the temperature of her skin. "What about them?" She did a good job of keeping her voice neutral, for all her internal reaction.

"Well, I've kind of gotten the impression that you don't one-hundred percent trust me, and might not believe every single word I say. No, don't apologise blue, the hurt's already done. So I thought you might want to read it from the source rather than have me tell you." He held a datapad up against the forcefield that blocked off the cell entrance.

Mission leant forward, peering at it. He saw her swallow, and her head tails quivered ever so slightly. Otherwise, her reaction was commendably controlled. "You could have faked that." He thought he detected an ever so small note of hope in her voice though.

"No, _I_ couldn't have faked it. Ygress probably could have, I suppose. But ask yourself this – why would we bother, blue?"

"Maybe you're thinking you can get me to co-operate with you if I think . . . if I think . . ."

"If you think your friends are not dead," he finished for her.

She stood glaring at him defiantly, hands on hips.

"Look around you, blue. Why d'you think we need your co-operation? You're not going anywhere. We're not going to get lax with you again. Whether you co-operate or not is just a nicety. Let's face facts."

"I saw them . . ."

"You saw them take wounds and fall into holes in the ground." Kreed grimaced. "In retrospect we were stupidly sloppy, and made assumptions that turned out to be incorrect. I mean, it's not as if Wookiees or Cathar have a reputation for being tough, is it? It's not as if Jedi are known for their healing abilities or anything."

Her mouth opened, then clamped shut again.

"Now, I just thought it was something you should know," he continued. "I hoped you might be able to take some peace of mind from it, and just perhaps, you might like to rethink some of the decisions you've made. Like no longer having quite so pressing a need to sacrifice yourself in a futile act of vengeance, for instance. Up to you though really, isn't it?"

He had to hand it to her, she was really holding her reactions in well. Without the artificial eye, there would have been no visible sign of her inner turmoil. "And this is supposed to make what you did better? You tried to kill them. You thought you'd killed them . . ."

"It makes it better, blue, on account of them not being dead. If you don't get yourself stupidly and wastefully killed in the meantime, it means you get to see them again. Now, I was under the impression you had slightly more in the way of brains than the average Gamorrean. Are you that desperate to prove me wrong?"

Mission didn't say anything. Kreed's still human hand came up to rub at his brow. Part of him wondered why he cared.

Rath had received the news of Juhani's and Zaalbar's survival with his usual unflappable calm.

_You do realise that this renders the _Ebon Hawk_ useless to us?_

_Oh, I don't know, Kreed. It's quite a nice vessel, don't you think? Fast certainly. Say what you like about Davik Kang, he knew spaceships._

Just once it would have been nice to see Rath admit that a plan had failed, rather than his smugly superior 'everything has gone according to one of my contingencies, and isn't at all a setback, oh no' attitude. It was getting to the point where he was starting to wonder if Rath was really anything like as clever as he liked to make out, and not simply a master of self-delusion and denial.

_Besides, the _Hawk_ became useless about four days after we captured it. It was always something of a long shot really._

Kreed had gritted his teeth and said nothing at that one. _I'm going to let __Mission__ know, unless you have any objections_.

He'd nodded. _You do that_.

The casualness had surprised him. As he'd started to walk away, Rath had added: _Some more news you might be interested in. Our source and been in touch again. Looks like it's heading for Dreya's Bastion. Which sort of makes sense, if you think about it. We're moving in. Could be our big chance, and bloodlessly too, if we play it right_.

Mission's silence continued, her gaze boring coldly into him.

He shook his head in frustration. "Just think about it blue. Think about what's really important to you when it comes down to the bottom line. Now, I've got preparations to make, and I can't be stopping to chat. I'm sure you'll manage to contain your disappointment."

As he turned his back on her and started to walk away, he heard her let out a tightly held breath, and make a soft noise that sounded like a sob.

-s-s-

Carth got lucky. Doubly lucky, in fact. He saw them before they saw him.

He was approaching the _Briny Spray_ Cantina, down in the Neaptide Marina district of Calius saj Leeloo when he spotted the man, just hanging out on the street. A few days ago, he probably wouldn't have given him a second glance, but in a few days, a lot had changed. Now he'd grown wary to the borders of paranoia, and the slightly awkward way the man's jacket hung, indicating the presence of a concealed weapon, virtually screamed out at him.

Consequently, he was able to keep on going, straight past the man, and the entrance of the _Briny Spray_ without breaking stride, and without giving himself away. He could feel his heart thudding, and the crowds of people enjoying the cool, clear evening seemed to occupy a whole other universe from the one he was currently stuck in. As he walked, he spotted two more of them too.

Anders had been compromised.

That was the only conclusion to be drawn. Part of him wondered what the hell he was meant to do now. The remainder concentrated on getting out of there as quickly as he could.

Anders was one of the intelligence officers who'd accompanied Carth to Berchest from the _Long and Winding Way_. He'd been out on the mainland, in Navilus, investigating one of Jerstyl Daxar's business fronts. When he'd gotten in touch last night, he'd mentioned that he'd discovered something interesting, and they'd agreed to meet up. They'd chosen Calius as the location, because Carth was positive the ports were being watched, and it would be much easier for Anders to get in undetected than for him to get out.

Apparently, that assessment had been overly optimistic.

Turning up a side street leading away from the Marina district, he lost himself in the throngs of people out to enjoy the nightlife by the seashore. Events of the past few days had gone progressively from bad to worse.

Bliss hadn't made it. Given events, he knew that now with a sick certainty. He'd monitored local hospital intakes for any sign of her, but there had been nothing. And there wasn't going to be anything now.

The guilt he felt over that tormented him. There had to have been something more he could have done.

Except rationally, he knew that there wasn't. He'd barely escaped as it was, and it had taken every ounce of strength, skill and agility he possessed. With her injuries slowing them down, all that would have changed was that they would now both be dead. That knowledge did nothing to make him feel better in the slightest, though.

Rationality was not remotely a comfort.

After evading his pursuers, Carth's first action had been to try to get in contact with Chief Tray'deya. Their first meeting, shortly after he'd arrived on Berchest, had taken place at a small, exclusive antiques store that had been set up as a front. Tray'deya had, as far as his neighbours were concerned, been running that business for close on two decades – nothing more than a genteel and slightly eccentric Bothan tradesman.

When he'd shown up there in the early hours of the morning, the shop had not just been shut down, but gone entirely, everything cleared out of it and even the walls freshly repainted. Of Tray'deya and his assistants, there had been no sign.

He'd fled quickly, losing himself in winding crystal streets.

A cramped room in a seedy hotel had allowed him to take the time to alter his appearance as best he could, then grab a few hours of sleep. Jolting from a nightmare in which a dark, terrifying figure tracked him remorselessly, raised voices from the reception area had alerted him to trouble. A muffled blaster shot had sent him scrambling out of the window narrowly ahead of the door to his room being kicked down.

For a while, he'd entertained the notion of going to the Calius authorities. A glimpse of a newscast had persuaded him otherwise, though. The massacre at Jerstyl Daxar's home was being passed off as a tragic accident caused by the explosion of a faulty generator.

Which meant the Calius authorities had at best been bought off, and at worst, were in on the whole thing. Bliss's throwaway comment about him not keeping abreast of local politics came whispering back.

To make matters worse, it had begun to seem as if his nightmare had somehow managed to follow him into the waking world. Crossing a curving bridgeway over the fast flowing icy river that cut Calius saj Leeloo in two, the crowds had thinned out until there was no one in sight in either direction.

An ominous feeling had grown inside him until it blossomed into full-blown fear – big, oppressive, heart-pounding fear, totally out of proportion to anything that was happening externally. He'd been aware of something terrible and malevolent watching him intently, closing on him fast. Rapid footsteps had approached along the bridgeway, the fear growing exponentially by the second as he listened to them, until it precluded sane reactions. He'd wanted to run, but his legs had rooted themselves to the spot. Instead, his hand had clenched around the grip of his blaster inside his jacket. A long shadow had appeared round the corner from behind him, growing rapidly . . . and a group of laughing, drunken teenagers had rounded the bend from the opposite direction, breaking the spell.

When he'd looked back again, the shadow had disappeared, as if it had never existed.

The incident had left him feeling decidedly shaken. Twice more since, similar sensations – although never quite as intense – had crept up on him when he'd found himself alone. Both times had jolted him into leaving the area as quickly as he could.

And now there was Anders.

His second piece of luck came when he walked past _her_. Yolanda Wintour, supposed former PA of Jerstyl Daxar, or whatever her real name was.

He was already a couple of paces past her before recognition clicked, her face matching up in his mind's eye almost exactly with the one on the datapad he carried in the inside pocket of his jacket.

If it hadn't been for the work Bliss had done on that face, he would never have had a hope of recognising her. Instead of the elegant, exotically made-up and coiffured woman of a few nights ago, there was a hard, spiky looking figure with dark hair cropped within an inch of her skull, wearing red-tinted wraparound shades and the kind of pseudo swoop-gang chic clothing that was apparently popular with Berchestian youth at the moment. Her skin tone was slightly darker than the image on the datapad, but otherwise the cheeks, nose, and even the shape of her lips all matched up just about perfectly.

He managed not to stop immediately in his tracks and give himself away then and there. Instead, he changed direction as unobtrusively as possible, following from a distance. It was fairly straightforward to keep track of her amid the crowds, as she was both above averagely tall, and had a visible implant socket at the back of her neck that he could key on.

His assumption had been that she would have made it off world by now. That she hadn't was . . . interesting, to say the least.

After about fifteen minutes – the crowds thinning out and making his job distinctly more difficult to do surreptitiously – he was thoroughly lost in Calius's mazelike network of narrow, winding streets and alleyways. Then she stopped.

As Carth slowed his stride, she descended a flight of orange crystal steps leading below street level. It looked to be some kind of club from the purple neon sign.

A massively broad human bouncer stopped the woman, and she passed him some kind of token. He then stepped to one side and allowed her to pass.

Carth hung back, sizing the bouncer up. His neck was broader than his shaven skull, and heavily tattooed bare arms were so heavily muscled that it was impossible for him to hold them flat to his side. In terms of bulk, he managed to make even Canderous seem like a sickly and malnourished child.

_Sweet Force preserve me . . ._

Taking a deep breath, he started down the steps towards the man. The bouncer's eyes – small, dark and pig-like – bored into him as he approached. He moved across to block the door, his massive arms folding across his even more massive chest.

Half way down, Carth stopped – attempted to smile disarmingly. "Nice evening, friend."

Slowly and carefully, making no sudden movements that could be construed as provocative; he opened his jacket and reached into a pocket, pulling out his wallet. The bouncer still hadn't reacted in any visible way. "You'll be wanting to see my . . ."

The wallet slipped from between Carth's fingers, bouncing down the steps to land between the man's legs. "Oops, sorry about that."

Grunting in displeasure the bouncer bent forward to retrieve the fallen wallet. For a moment, his eyes left Carth.

And Carth moved, hurling himself forward down the remaining steps, straight at him.

As the bouncer started to look up, Carth hooked an arm around his broad neck, twisted round, and used all his concentrated weight and momentum to drive the man's head as hard as possible into the orange crystal wall. There was a very audible crunch, followed by a soft exhalation. The bouncer went down with a heavy thud.

He gave no signs of getting up again.

Standing up, Carth retrieved his wallet, sucked in a deep breath, and dusted himself down. He still wasn't quite able to credit that that had worked. Then he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

-s-s-

Dreya's Bastion was a space station. Nothing overly remarkable about that, except for the fact that it was situated in the middle of the Maw Cluster of black holes near the Kessel system and its infamous spice mines.

The Maw Cluster itself was an impossibility, at least in accepted astrophysical terms, and should have collapsed into itself millions – if not billions of years ago. The chances of such a stable configuration of singularities existing in such close proximity had been calculated as being somewhere in the order of several hundreds of trillions to one, but exist it did.

Tamar looked out of the cockpit of the _Ajunta's Blade_ at the curtains of incandescent gas that blazed around them, spiralling in complex orbits and heated by friction as it plunged into the endlessly devouring gullets of the Maw's black holes. The compact ship's radiation monitors clicked steadily in a background accompaniment from the constant bombardment of deadly x-rays. It was an eerily beautiful – and in several respects, quite terrifying – sight, unique in the known galaxy.

He glanced across at Yuthura, whose gaze was fixed firmly ahead. They'd spent the last sixteen hours painstakingly picking their way through the vast and turbulent gravitational tides of the Maw, knowing that any slight navigational error would result in their deaths. It had been exhausting work, the two of them switching roles from pilot to navigator every couple of hours in an effort to keep themselves sharp and concentrated.

With the Force to guide them, they had never truly been in any vast danger, but Tamar's respect for the pilots who regularly made this trip without any Force sensitivity to fall back on had become immense. _Leaving aside for the moment that they're likely all smugglers, criminals or pirates_.

Finally, Yuthura let out a long exhalation, leaning back in her seat and briefly closing her eyes, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Made it."

Around the space station itself, the gravitational tides of the nearest black holes cancelled each other out, creating a neutral zone just under a million kilometres across that allowed Dreya's Bastion to exist. For the moment, they were safe – from the black holes at least.

Tamar nodded. The clicking of the radiation monitors subsided slightly, and he thumbed the comm. unit. "Dreya's Bastion, this is the skyrunner _Ajunta's Blade_, requesting permission to dock."

For a moment, the open channel wailed thinly. Then a response came back. "Greetings, my Lord Revan. It has been a long time since we were last honoured with your presence. A landing pattern to docking bay six has been transmitted. We look forward to your immanent arrival."

Tamar and Yuthura exchanged a look.

"Well, you could choose to take it as a positive sign," she commented dryly. "If Dreya didn't know who you were, it wouldn't say much for his ability to provide the rest of the information we need."

"Right." A faint smile briefly crossed his lips. "Happy thoughts."

"Happy thoughts," Yuthura agreed neutrally, uploading the landing pattern and letting the autopilot take on the bulk of the work of bringing them in to dock.

"Query: master, I presume that I am not to be included in this requirement for 'happy thoughts'?"

The mixture of dismay and contempt in the assassin droid's voice almost drew another smile. "Don't worry yourself HK. You're exempted. I know well enough where your capabilities lie."

"Gratitude: Thank you, master."

T3 warbled something sarcastic that Tamar didn't fully catch, but he thought it was something along the lines of 'barely capable of thoughts of any description'.

"Advisory: I would not sound so smug if I were in your position, you perambulating trash-can. There was a time when the master would have had you melted down and reconfigured as a toaster for your failure. I still fail to see why he does not."

"Beep!"

Tamar had finally managed to persuade Marshall to relinquish Darth Auza's data core, as much by sleight of hand as anything. He'd got him to agree that using the advanced slicing facilities Dreya's Bastion had to offer was not only a good idea, but absolutely necessary, and even his own idea, then made sure that it would be himself and Yuthura making the trip. The argument he'd used was that they were the known crew of the _Blade_, and any other combination would raise very awkward questions with Dreya, potentially giving away the fact that sections of the Republic military were co-operating with Revan. There had been a few arguments, but not, honestly, as much as he'd feared. He'd half hoped that T3 would manage to slice the thing on the trip over, but the utility droid had eventually been forced to admit that it simply didn't have enough processing power to do the job.

If anything, Marshall had been easier to persuade than Zaalbar. He'd actually had to bring up the life debt – something he'd quietly been trying to persuade the Wookiee had been fulfilled several times over on the Star Forge. And this was simply a venture designed to find information on Mission's whereabouts.

The _Ajunta's Blade_ settled down lightly in the landing bay.

They had the bay to themselves, Tamar noted as he unsnapped his seat restraints, their surroundings dwarfing their small but heavily armed ship. Depending on your outlook, you could take that one of two ways. Either Dreya was being extra considerate of his 'famous' guest's privacy and comfort. Or he was making it much easier to either expose the bay to vacuum or flood it with nerve gas, should the need arise.

To be honest, Tamar suspected a little of both considerations.

A few minutes later the four of them were walking – or in T3's case, rolling – across the silent and near empty bay. There was no sign of any welcoming committee, which surprised Tamar ever so slightly. From the tenor of their initial communication with the station, he'd anticipated a reception of some kind to be waiting for them on their arrival. Perhaps even Dreya himself.

As they approached the bulkhead doors leading into the rest of the station, they were scanned. Dreya's Bastion had a strict policy that no one was allowed beyond its docking bays with any kind of weaponry – a measure designed to help keep the peace between some of the station's less than salubrious clientele – so his and Yuthura's lightsabers had been left back onboard the _Blade_. Persuading HK to give up all his multifarious armaments had been somewhat akin to trying to take the toys away from a sulky toddler, but even the assassin droid was now unarmed.

The scan stopped. The bulkhead doors remained closed.

There was an intercom panel. It warbled to life. "Apologies, Lord Revan. Yourself and Lady Ban are most welcome. However, we must ask that the assassin droid remain behind with your ship."

Tamar frowned. "HK-47 is a protocol droid, highly skilled in translation and cultural analysis. Your scans will have shown it to be unarmed. You have my assurance it will pose no threat, and its presence will expedite my stay considerably."

"Nevertheless, we must ask that the assassin droid remains behind."

_Fine._ "And my utility droid?"

"Your utility droid is acceptable."

Tamar drew in a deep breath. "Well, you heard the man HK."

"Really, master. I must protest at this treatment."

He nodded. "Protest noted, HK. Now get back to the ship and wait for us."

"Supplication: master, I am certain I can convince this impertinent meatbag to change his mind, given the opportunity. For instance, breaking every bone in a human's hand is a very eloquent form of persuasion, I have often found."

Tamar patted the droid's shoulder. "I'll bear your suggestion in mind. For the moment though, get back to the ship."

"Exasperation: as you wish, master."

As HK turned back, the bulkhead doors finally slid open in front of them.

-s-s-

Music was provided by a generically mediocre Bith band, while a bored looking Twi'lek woman gyrated perfunctorily to its strains upon a raised stage. The air was heavy with scented smoke, making Carth's eyes sting and tickling the back of his throat uncomfortably.

He spotted Yolanda – the back of her head at least – seated at a table halfway across the common room from him. Seated opposite her was a hard, wiry looking man with steel grey hair. Crowded round an adjacent table was a group consisting of a Trandoshan, a pair of Klatooinians with flat, vaguely dog-like faces, and another pair of humans, dressed in the same design of flightsuit that the man talking to Yolanda wore and, pretty obviously, with him.

The remainder of the club's patrons seemed to be halfway keeping an eye on this grouping. The atmosphere in general was wary and tense. _Waiting for something to spark it off_, Carth thought grimly, familiar enough with this kind of dive.

Yolanda's companion looked him up and down, but apparently saw nothing there that interested him particularly, quickly returning to his conversation. Thankfully, Yolanda didn't turn around. He suspected that his attempts at disguising himself wouldn't stand up terribly well to her scrutiny.

Making his way to a free booth near them, he sat down and ordered a glass of the wishy-washy local Berchestian ale – which cost at least three times what it normally should have done.

"That wasn't the agreed price." Carth just about managed to catch Yolanda's voice, raised in anger, over the dreary music.

The man shrugged. ". . . situation's changed . . ." was all Carth was able to pick out. Lying on the table between the two of them, he noticed some kind of plasteel box with what looked like a combination lock on it.

". . . can't alter the deal . . ."

His drink arrived, and he missed the next few lines of conversation as he paid the waitress.

". . . nonsense. I'm offering to pay exactly what we agreed."

"Not good enough." The man's voice was flat and emphatic. Carth could see the five assorted heavies listening intently to what was going on, tensed for action.

"No one else will pay you more than I am." Yolanda's response was chilly and precise, audible through a brief lull in the music.

"Now that's where you're wrong." The man smiled nastily. _Here goes_. Carth felt himself tensing. "We know someone who's willing to pay a _lot_ more, except what he wants is . . ." The music raised in a limp flourish, drowning out the finish of his sentence. The man's hand reached for something lying on the chair next to him, below the level of the table.

A blaster shot discharged.

From the note of it, Carth guessed it was something small, like a holdout. He was somewhat surprised to see that it was the man whose eyes widened in shock. Then he toppled over sideways, out of his seat.

He'd been shot in the gut at point blank range from beneath the table. A couple of beats later and everything erupted.

The five around the nearby table came to their feet in a rush, lunging at Yolanda. One of the humans blundered into a nearby table in his haste, upsetting several drinks and drawing angry shouts of protest. Yolanda was already up and moving, toppling the table she'd been sat at over and sending the empty glasses on top of it flying.

As her would be assailants broke stride, she leapt up onto one of the chairs, using it to launch herself straight at them.

Her heel caught one of the Klatooinians flush in the side of the head.

It went down heavily, and then she was past them. The Trandoshan made a grab at her, but her other foot connected between his legs with a crunch that was audible even over the music. She evaded easily as he doubled up, stumbling and barging into the back of a seated Rodian.

No one else in the club was shy about throwing themselves into the fray. Within seconds, tables were being upturned and there was a churning scrum of bodies thrashing and flailing around in the middle of the floor in a bizarre parody of frenzied dancing. Apparently, this wasn't an altogether unusual occurrence, even allowing for the blaster shot. The band kept on playing, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem, and the Twi'lek kept on gyrating on the stage, every bit as bored and perfunctory as before.

As Carth tried to rise, someone thumped him in the side of the head. His response was instinctive, grabbing his attacker by the back of the head and slamming him face first into the top of the table, before letting him slide, unconscious to the floor. The artistry of barroom brawling was something he wasn't entirely unfamiliar with, dating mainly from his time just out of the fleet academy.

Trying to follow Yolanda, he barged through the heaving mass of bodies, evading clumsy blows swung his way and ducking beneath the flight path of a hurled chair. The companions of the man she'd shot were attempting to do likewise, with varying degrees of success.

A drunken and rather overweight Rodian, reeking of spirits and cabbagy-scented sweat, tried to grapple with him, proving annoyingly persistent. Finally, he managed to deliver a punch to an area where he hazily thought the Rodian's kidneys might be, then twist and throw him as his grip slackened, over his hip and to the floor.

The Trandoshan, meanwhile, had grabbed a man who'd tried to jump him, holding him kicking helplessly above the floor and using him like a battering ram to clear a space around him.

Carth took advantage, elbow connecting with the teeth of someone who tried to grab him, before breaking for the space that had opened up. He caught a glimpse of Yolanda's back as she disappeared through a service door beside the bar, the second Klatooinian in hot pursuit. Two other nondescript looking individuals he hadn't noticed before this point slipped through after them.

From the periphery of his vision, someone aimed a wildly uncontrolled haymaker in his direction. He managed sway out of the way, doubling the man who'd aimed it over with a sharp punch to the gut. Then he was through the main bulk of it, running close behind the Trandoshan, who'd discarded his broken and bleeding battering ram by hurling him almost casually across the bar.

Both music and the sounds of the brawl faded as he sprinted up a flight of dimly lit stairs. More blaster shots rang out – the same holdout as before, but this time answered by heavier weapons returning fire.

Someone cried out. Then a second person. Carth grabbed at his own blaster, almost surprised to find it still in place in the concealed holster he wore beneath his jacket at the small of his back.

He burst out of a swinging doorway into a narrow alleyway running behind the club. The Klatooinian, and the two men he'd seen chasing after Yolanda were all down, either dead or with disabling blaster wounds.

Yolanda herself was just in the process of spinning to face the Trandoshan, who was charging straight at her like a maddened Ronto, mouth open and growling savagely. She managed to get a shot off, but the problem with a holdout against three-hundred odd pounds of extremely angry reptile was that you needed to either hit very particular areas, or hit several times. She had time to do neither.

The impact was crunching, the Trandoshan's bulk more or less burying her as he slammed her back into one of the crystal walls. The blaster went flying from her grasp.

Carth aimed his own weapon at the struggling figures, hesitating briefly. The Trandoshan was growling at her in his own language, too angry to be remotely coherent, shaking her as if she was a rag doll, saliva spraying from his jaws.

If he didn't do something, she was going to be torn apart.

He fired. Once. Twice. Three times. Unerringly into the Trandoshan's back.

Finally, with one last shudder, the Trandoshan lay still, its bulk pinning her to the ground. She was still moving, albeit feebly, struggling to extricate herself.

Carth walked cautiously across, able to smell charred flesh and scales. Yolanda stopped struggling as she noticed his approach, staring up at him, her face bloody.

"Easy, easy. I'm not going to hurt you." Grunting in effort, he hauled the Trandoshan's limp bulk off her. Immediately she started to crawl back from him, up against the wall. He eyes looked wild, possibly concussed.

He leant over her, concern flashing . . .

The wild look faded, her eyes refocusing instantly. The shaking stopped. Before he could react, she grabbed his wrist, wrenching sideways and tearing the blaster from his grasp. Then she punched him hard, in the mouth.

-s-s-

"You should have sent word ahead." Kemo Dreya smiled. It was a chilly expression that didn't touch his eyes as he paced against the panoramic backdrop of the Maw Cluster, illuminated by the brightly glowing Roche lobe of a binary pair of black holes. "We would have been able to direct you through one of our more stable entry lanes – much less fraught than the rather perilous approach you made."

Tamar watched the man carefully from the comfort of the armchair he'd been offered.

Dreya was very tall, very thin, and very pale, dressed all in black. His hunched shoulders and ragged, salt-and-pepper hair gave him the look of a slightly wild scarecrow, or perhaps a mad scientist who was trying hard to give the appearance of sanity, but not quite managing to pull it off.

He was obviously nervous, but then, Tamar, reflected, having the former Darth Revan – and right now the single most wanted individual in the galaxy – show up on your doorstep was probably a rather nerve-wracking experience. Indeed, a lack of nerves on Dreya's part would have been a lot more worrying.

"I didn't want to compromise your neutrality by announcing to the galaxy I was coming here in advance," he said eventually, voice cool. "I trust in your integrity implicitly of course, but I'm afraid others might be more prone to succumbing to temptation."

Dreya gave a strained laugh. It sounded disconcertingly like that of a little girl, and he strangled it back quickly. His gaze flicked across to Yuthura, then back to Tamar again for about the fifth time in the last two minutes. "You know, Revan . . ." he trailed off, blinking uncomfortably. "You don't mind if I call you Revan, do you?"

"I tend to go by Tamar now. But whatever makes you most comfortable."

He smiled greasily. "Tamar. Hmm yes. Doesn't sound quite right somehow, does it? Anyway . . ." He made a dismissive gesture. "Anyway, what I was saying was that when I first saw you over the internal monitors, I actually thought the stories going round might have been correct. That your mind really had been erased, and a new personality implanted by the Jedi. You looked different, you see? Ha! I mean, you look exactly the same, but your body-language and facial set – totally transformed." He folded his hands together, knuckles cracking. "Now I talk to you though . . . that's all just an elaborate act, isn't it?"

Tamar felt a stab of icy cold. If Dreya had been deliberately trying to put him off balance then he could hardly have said anything better to achieve that effect. It was a major effort to keep his expression calm and unruffled.

"Excuse me?" he asked when he was finally sure his voice would sound vaguely composed.

"Yes, yes. That's it exactly." Dreya's excitement was palpable, topping even the nervousness. "Those conversational nuances. That way you have of using silence, more effective than any interrogative." Dreya stopped pacing behind his blacktopped desk. "You can tell me. It's all just an act, isn't it? The real you is still there, underneath the surface. You fooled the Jedi, didn't you? Tricked them good. You're not really gone at all." His smile was broad, convinced of its cleverness.

Tamar's hands gripped the chair arms tightly. He was aware of Yuthura looking at him sidelong, and although her face was expressionless, he could sense her concern.

He drew in a deep, calming breath. "I assure you, Mr. Dreya, that what you originally heard about me is broadly correct. My brain was catastrophically damaged in an ambush by Malak, and my old personality and memories were lost. Rather than simply allowing me to die – as some would say was the sensible option – the Jedi Order constructed a new personality for me. I have no more than a few extremely fleeting flashes from before that time. Everything else is completely gone."

_Isn't it?_

Dreya finally sat himself down again, nodding slowly. "Of course. Of course. I'll happily go along with whatever front you wish to present." His tone was conspiratorial, just short of winking knowingly.

The sudden urge to reach across the desk, grab Dreya by the lapels, and shake him was strong. Tamar suppressed it. In the end, what real difference did it make? He was Revan. He bore responsibility for all that Revan had done. Whether he remembered it or not was just a nicety, and what others believed him to be shouldn't matter.

But somehow, it did.

"So, how am I able to be of service to you this time, then?"

Kemo Dreya was an information broker, perhaps the most renowned in that profession in the galaxy. Over nearly three decades, he'd built a reputation as the best in the business, dealing with any party who paid for his services with total even-handedness and confidentiality. Practically, his clientele tended towards the more criminal end of the spectrum, particularly organisations such as the Exchange, but as long as a person abided by his rules, they wouldn't be turned away from his isolated and impregnable fortress.

Not even former Dark Lords of the Sith.

"We've done business before, I take it?"

Dreya nodded. "Oh yes. Three separate occasions, I believe." Once again, his gaze went briefly to Yuthura. He seemed fascinated. "Despite what some say about you, I always found you to be one of my more polite and civilised clients, with a true appreciation of the value of knowledge and information rivalling even my own." He smiled, an uncle speaking fondly of a favoured nephew.

Tamar got the impression that, in Dreya's eyes, being polite and civilised, and having an appreciation for the value of knowledge and information more than excused persecuting a galactic war that had cost billions of lives. "Interesting. Out of curiosity, what exactly did I purchase from you on these last visits?"

"Come now, Revan. You know very well that I would never break confidentiality and divulge that information."

"Not even to the same person who purchased that information in the first place?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Hmm, you raise an interesting question. If, as you insist, your old memories and personality are gone, then can you really claim to be the same person as you were before? If we are not the product of our experiences, what can we truly claim to be?" He smiled thinly. "No, in the circumstances I feel I must be silent."

_Trying to draw a confession again_. Tamar was aware that Yuthura was looking at him closely, and decided to let the matter drop. It was not, he reminded himself, what they were there for. "I can accept that. What I would really like right now, is to rent the use the use of your slicing facilities."

Dreya looked slightly surprised, and wasn't entirely successful in covering it.

"In my current circumstances, I no longer have access to such facilities of my own."

He nodded quickly. "Of course. That can be arranged. You understand the price? That a copy of any sliced information be filed in our libraries, in addition to the monetary fees."

"I understand."

Another smile, nervousness surfacing again. "Then I do not see there is a problem."

"If you could have my utility droid directed to the facilities, it will take care of the matter." Tamar gestured towards T3.

T3 beeped an affirmative.

Dreya nodded again, distractedly. "That will be arranged."

Yuthura leant forward placing a datapad down on the desk between them and drawing his gaze. "There _is_ another matter." Her voice of was as smooth as oiled satin, shiveringly seductive. Apparently she'd noticed his interest, and was fully prepared to play to it.

"Indeed?" Tamar thought Dreya looked pleased. He smiled at Yuthura in an entirely different manner to his previous smiles.

"We wish to trace a particular group of mercenaries," she continued, returning his smile with apparent warmth. "On here are descriptions and photo-fits of several different members of the group, plus what tactical and equipment analyses we have. I trust this will be enough for you to work with?"

Dreya picked the datapad up, scanning its contents. "I believe so. It may take a while – there are quite a number of such groups in the galaxy, after all. However, I am entirely confident I can attain a . . . positive outcome for you, Lady Ban." He was staring at her a little more intently than was perhaps strictly necessary. "Now, is there anything else I can do for you?"

His visible disappointment when Tamar answered instead of her was almost comical. "I also wish to purchase full intelligence profiles on a couple of individuals." He ticked the names off on his fingers. "Firstly Morrigance Fel, the former head of my intelligence operations when I was Dark Lord of the Sith. I assume you and she have met? As an intellectual exercise, pretend she isn't dead, and see where that leads you. Secondly there is Elleste Strine, originally of Ord Radama, who I believe graduated from the Sith academy on Korriban two years ago."

Dreya finished noting this down. Tamar could almost see the man's thoughts working, trying to work out which out of all that was truly what he wanted, and which was nothing more than smokescreen. "And nothing more? In that case we come to the matter of payment."

Yuthura pushed another datapad across the desk. "This details a couple of credit lines." Marshall had set them up out of Republic Intelligence black budget funds. "I hope that will be satisfactory?"

After a moment, Dreya nodded. "Most satisfactory." He looked back to Tamar. "Since we're still going with the idea that you have no memories, I just want to be clear that this pays for my work. Not for the results I achieve. If I fail to find any information, or any information that you find useful, you still pay me for my efforts in full. Your old self never had a problem with that arrangement, and I trust you won't either?"

"No problem at all."

"Then I suggest this brings our meeting to a conclusion." He rose to his feet, Tamar rising with him and shaking hands. "Now, I'm sure that you're both tired after your trip. The leisure facilities this station has to offer are fully at your disposal."

The doors behind them opened and one of Dreya's assistants – a rather young looking male Neimoidian – entered to escort them out. Just before the doors to the office could close behind them, Yuthura broke off and turned back.

"One more thing, Master Dreya," Tamar heard her saying. "I understand that you maintain a collection of Sith and Jedi texts? I've heard that it's the single largest of its sort currently held in private hands. I'd be _most_ appreciative if I might be given a tour . . ."

Then the doors slid shut between them.

-s-s-

"Damn it, you've knocked my bloody tooth loose." Carth winced as he probed at it with his tongue. Even that small amount of pressure made it wobble in its socket, the taste of blood hot and coppery.

The look he got back wasn't even unsympathetic. It simply passed straight over him as she strode past, footsteps echoing on the plastocrete floor of the darkened warehouse.

"You really don't want to hit me in the mouth."

They reached the door to a small office at the back of the warehouse. Yolanda went immediately to work on its lock with a security spike. "Was that a threat?"

Carth jolted. It was the first time she'd spoken to him since 'behind you,' at Jerstyl Daxar's mansion four nights ago. Even back in the alleyway, with their guns trained on each other, she hadn't said a word.

Then of course, they'd both noticed the shadowed figure watching them from the end of the alleyway. The same shadow from the bridgeway. The shadow from his nightmare.

They'd been running pretty much ever since.

"No, no. Not a threat. More of a warning, really." A hesitation. "The last woman who hit me in the mouth . . ."

He'd been twenty, back on Telos at a big midsummer communal barbecue. Morgana had been standing directly in front of him, talking to a group of her friends. Drink had been flowing freely, and his own so-called best friend, Arran Tuth, had decided, in his rather inebriated state, that it was a good idea to try grabbing at her backside. Added to the fact that Carth had chosen exactly that moment to start laughing at another friend's joke, and two and two had come to together to make five. A second or so later, he'd been sprawled on the grass, wondering why exactly his jaw hurt so much.

And six months later, they'd been engaged.

". . . let's just say that she suffered a fate more terrible than anything you could possibly imagine."

The lights came on, making Carth blink against the sudden brightness. "If that was supposed to be scary, you should know that I've trodden in scarier things than you."

He just shook his head and sighed wearily. As she had her back to him, she didn't notice though.

She moved across the small, untidy office quickly, leaning over a desk and hitting a bright red panel that was labelled, 'Fire Alarm'. Carth opened his mouth to protest, but no alarm went off.

"Get out of here, Republic," she said heavily, still not looking at him. She turned toward a large plasteel safe and began entering a combination in the front panel.

"Republic . . . ?"

It was her turn to sigh, exasperated. "Look, you're obviously not Sith or Exchange from the way you act. I thought you might be local intelligence for a little while, but your accent is what? Corellian? And you certainly don't know the streets well enough. So yeah, Republic. Recently transferred from another branch of the military, right? Looks like their training's got a bit lax recently, but given the war and the personnel shortages I guess you can't blame them for making compromises." The safe clicked open as the combination was accepted.

"Whatever you say, lady." The ease with which she'd pinned him down was rather eye opening. He obviously hadn't improved much from Bliss's initial assessment of his abilities. The fact that she'd apparently bought the Corellian accent as genuine wasn't really a huge consolation.

"What I say is get the hell out of here. Really. You're getting caught up in something far beyond your capabilities, and you're going to end up dead. Quite probably before the night is over. Use your brain for just a second, if you can possibly manage that."

"Look, lady. I just . . ." Carth started, indignant.

"Saved my life?" She turned to look at him. Her face was hard and angular, striking rather than conventionally pretty. Dark eyes seemed to blaze as they looked at him. She let the left sleeve of her jacket slide down to her elbow, revealing a spring-loaded blade secured there. It looked rusty, and it took Carth a moment to realise that that was dried blood. "I'd already stabbed the Trandoshan when you shot him for me. But thanks anyway. It's the thought that counts."

His jaw tightened. "I'm already caught up in this in a big way."

"Then take the opportunity to get out now, while you can." She turned away again, swinging the safe door open. Over her shoulder, Carth glimpsed enough in the way of weaponry to equip a small army.

"So what, I'll draw _him_ away from you, so you can get away in safety?"

"Well, that would be a bonus," she agreed, her back to him as she sorted through the weaponry, selecting what she wanted. "But I hardly think that's likely, do you? It's me he wants. Not you."

Remembering the bridgeway, Carth wasn't so sure of that at all. He saw her selecting a number of grenades from the safe, then something that looked like a collar, which she weighed up a moment, almost put back, before slipping it into one her jacket's voluminous pockets.

"Where's your partner? Sindra Taran, she was going by, wasn't she? She seemed much more sensible than you."

He said nothing, feeling an uncomfortable tightness to his chest.

She looked round. "He got her, didn't he?" Abruptly she swore. "Maybe you're right after all. Maybe it is you he's tracking."

"What do you know about him?" Suddenly Carth's voice and expression were every bit has hard and grim as hers.

A hesitation, before she shrugged. "He's known as the Catcher. He's a Sith assassin, and an extremely powerful Dark Jedi. You understand what that means? Is it finally penetrating through that thick skull of yours the kind of mess you're getting yourself into here?"

He met her gaze levelly. "I've had one or two encounters with Dark Jedi before. I know exactly what they're capable of."

Her mouth opened, then closed again. The skin around her eyes tightened furiously. "Bantha crap. The last thing either of us can afford right now is fraking machismo bantha crap!"

"They die just the same as everybody else." There was a slightly startling moment when he realised he'd heard Canderous once say exactly the same thing, in an almost exactly the same tone of voice.

Suddenly she'd lifted one of the guns she'd taken – a modern, top of the line Aratech pistol – and pointed it at the centre of his chest. "Get out of here. Now."

He raised his hands, taken aback. Her eyes were absolutely deadly serious. "Easy, lady . . ."

"I said get out." Her expression was unyielding. "You're looking to avenge your dead partner. I can see it in your eyes. Well hell, if you cared about her, I'm sorry for your loss. But I'm not getting caught up in that kind of idiocy. So frak off! Right now."

"Look . . ."

"You don't think I'll shoot? I've shot at least four other morons just like you tonight alone."

He held his ground. "If you were going to shoot me, you'd have done it already."

"Really?" He saw her finger tightening on the trigger, knuckle turning white. _Yeah, very clever Carth, let's dare the woman pointing a gun at you to shoot._

Then the lights went out.

-s-s-

The _Shadow Dancer_ settled gently down in docking bay three of Dreya's Bastion, alongside a converted pleasure yacht.

Rath Gannaya's hand came up to stroke idly through his beard. He wasn't quite sure how he felt. He'd expected to be excited; tense; perhaps even afraid, but none of that was really there. Instead, there was no more than a vague anticipation of forthcoming disappointment, and the persistently growing sense that he'd made a mistake somewhere. To call it aggravating was an understatement.

Ahead of him, Theda turned around in the pilot's seat, unstrapping herself. He managed a nod and thin smile for her benefit as their eyes met, but looking at her – and what she represented – just made the doubt more concrete in his mind.

Perhaps Kreed was right. Perhaps he was breaking his own rules.

Rath turned quickly to the comms panel, suppressing a self-directed flash of anger. As he reached across to open a holo-link, there was a warbling note indicating an incoming call. _Handy_.

On opening the channel, a familiar, but not particularly friendly looking face appeared, hovering in front of him. He forced another smile of broad insincerity. "Kemo, my old friend. How good to see you again. I was just going to give you a call and say hi."

Dreya didn't smile back. In fact, his expression looked distinctly forbidding. "Interesting timing you show with this visit, Rath."

"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow enquiringly. "How so?"

Dreya ignored the question. "Tell me, are you still employing that big Trandoshan. Shakra or something, wasn't it? And the cyborg. Kreed. Mandalorian, I seem to recollect?"

Revan was here then. Not only that, he was looking for them. This time the small flash of excitement – the _frissance_ of adrenaline starting to flow – was most definitely there.

Like Dreya had done previously, Rath ignored the implied questions. "I thought you might like to know that you're playing host to a rather . . . shall we say, interesting guest right now. Assuming that you don't already know this."

"Yes, I was speaking to him about an hour ago. A vastly changed man, in many different respects." Dreya's eyes narrowed, the lines around his mouth exaggerated by his frown.

"One would expect so, given what we've all heard."

"Yet in several absolutely critical aspects, still frighteningly similar to the old incarnation."

Rath just smiled blandly. "Is that a warning, Kemo, or simply a threat?"

Any pretence at civility vanished. "Go away, Rath. Whatever game you two are playing I have no intention of getting caught up in the middle of it."

Rath sighed, feigning hurt and disappointment. "Last time I was here, you said that I would always be welcome."

Dreya snorted, nostrils flaring. "We all say things we regret sometimes, don't we?"

"How about I give you an assurance, Kemo? Neither I, nor any of my associates, will breach, or cause anyone else to breach, your precious peace and neutrality. We will take care of our business and be gone from here at the earliest opportunity. Does that satisfy?"

For several long and drawn out seconds there was silence. Finally, Dreya grunted. "If anyone so much as discharges a blaster by accident during your stay, I'm going to hold you personally responsible, find you in breach, and put out a general contract on your head. Are we clear?"

"Crystal, my dear Kemo. Crystal."

Dreya gave another snort. The holo-link cut off abruptly.

"Always a pleasure," Rath said softly, to no one in particular. A moment or two later, he stood up. _Time for action_.

-s-s-

"Ysalamari." Yuthura's voice spoke over Tamar's earpiece.

"Pardon?"

"Ysalamari," she repeated, as if reading. "A sessile tree-dwelling species of herbivorous fur-scaled salamander-like creatures, native to the planet Myrkr. Adult specimens typically measure in the region of 60 centimetres in length."

"They sound absolutely adorable," he said dryly.

"Don't they just." She matched his tone almost exactly. "Don't worry, Tamar. I haven't decided I want to buy a pet or anything. It relates to the matter that Juhani raised."

Her period of sudden but temporary disconnection from the Force when the mercenaries had attacked on Taris. It had been discussed between them all at considerable length, and he'd had the nagging certainty that he should know something more than he did on the subject. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he'd tried, he'd not managed to dredge up anything more from his memories than that knowledge he should know more. "You know, if you keep being cryptic like this, I'm going to start suspecting that you've been spending far too much time with Jolee."

He heard laughter, quickly choked off.

On raising the subject of Force disconnection with Jolee, the old man's response had simply been, 'hmm, interesting.' Which could have meant he didn't know anything, but didn't want to admit ignorance. Or that he did know something, and for whatever reason, wasn't going to say. Or then again, it could simply have meant, 'hmm, interesting.' Unfortunately – and infuriatingly – it was impossible to tell.

"Have you heard of vornskr?" she asked him.

He thought about it for a moment. "A species of large, vaguely wolf-like predators with long whip-like tails that secrete a mild form of paralysing venom. And I don't have a text book to read from." He felt his heart suddenly skip a beat. "They hunt using an innate Force sensitivity, and in times past have been used by both Jedi and Sith as guard dogs."

"That's them," she agreed. "Like ysalamari, they're originally a native species of Myrkr. The ysalamari, as it happens, are a natural prey species of the vornskr, and have evolved an interesting form of camouflage as a self-defence mechanism."

"Camouflage?"

"They can, via some mechanism that is not properly understood, create bubbles in the Force. Whilst inside the radius of one of these bubbles a person is effectively blinded to the Force, unable to either sense, or connect to it."

After a moment's considering pause, Tamar let out a low whistle. "Well, well. That is . . . interesting." Inside his head, he was picturing the modified assault droids both Juhani and Zaalbar had both described, and the strange tanks they'd said were built into them.

"Quite."

_Interesting, but for another time_. "You managed to charm Dreya into giving you access to his collection then?"

There was a tiny pause before Yuthura answered. "Well, no actually."

"Ah?"

"No on the charm part." He almost thought that she sounded slightly embarrassed. "Apparently Mr. Dreya's interest in me was entirely of an . . . intellectual nature."

"Intellectual?" A note of puzzlement crept in.

He heard her sigh. "If you must know Tamar, he wanted to make a scan of my tattoos."

"Your tattoos?" The puzzlement wasn't lessening.

"I'm getting some kind of strange echo on the line, Tamar." Exasperation had crept into her voice. "Apparently Kemo Dreya is extremely interested in all aspects of Sith and Jedi culture. Not just the written lore."

"So you let him scan your tattoos?"

Another tiny pause. Very definite embarrassment, he decided. "I thought it was a small enough price to pay, considering."

A moment later another thought occurred. "Did you, er, let him scan all of them? Because you do have rather a lot. And, erm, some of them are located in . . ." he trailed off and let out a breath. "No, I probably don't want to know the answer to that, do I?"

"Probably not, Tamar."

"Well, um, well done," he said lamely.

"Can we drop the subject, do you think?"

"That's probably for the best," he agreed. At that precise moment, his earpiece beeped, indicating another incoming call. "You want to stay connected and listen in?"

"I'll stay on," she confirmed.

He switched over channels. "Yes?" he asked tersely.

The voice that spoke was unfamiliar; male and cultured with a calm, controlled tone. It certainly wasn't Dreya. "I'm speaking to Jedi Knight Tamar De'Nolo?"

"That's correct," he answered after a brief pause.

"Formerly known as Darth Revan?"

"Who is this?" Not Dreya, and not one of Dreya's employees either. They all, irritatingly, referred to him as either Lord Revan, or simply 'my Lord'. Tamar suddenly felt a sense of strong disquiet. This was not going to be good news.

"That's far less important than what I have to say to you."

"But it is so nice to have a name," he drawled. "Polite, if nothing else."

"And we certainly don't want to start off on the wrong foot simply through being impolite." The voice sounded amused. "My name is Rath Gannaya. I don't particularly anticipate that you've heard of me."

He was certainly correct enough about that part. "Well, Master Gannaya, what can I do for you?" Tamar made no effort to make his voice sound even remotely friendly.

A chuckle. "Please, there's no need to be so formal. Call me Rath."

"Rath then."

"Better. Much better."

Tamar bit back his initial response. Antagonising someone simply for the sake of it was practically never a good move. "As I recall, _Rath_, you were the one so eager to get to the point just a few seconds ago."

"Indeed I was. I think this is going to work so much more smoothly if I show you what I want rather than try to explain. There are four holo-terminals about fifty metres from your position, through the doors directly in front of you and straight ahead. The nearest of the terminals is, conveniently enough, labelled with the number one. Go to it. Do you understand?"

"I think I might just manage to get my head around your instructions. Complex though they are."

"Good. Then I'll expect to talk you again in about a minute's time. I am glad you're not being unnecessarily difficult or obtuse about this." The comm. link went dead.

He switched immediately back to Yuthura. "You catch that?"

"Every last word." She sounded about as happy as he felt.

"I don't suppose the name Rath Gannaya means anything to you?"

"No." Her reply was short and succinct. "Walk slowly. I'm coming over."

"Wait, Yuthura." There was urgency in his voice.

"I'm listening." He took the absolute neutrality of her words as a less than positive sign.

He started walking, straight ahead through the door that Rath had indicated. "If this is some kind of bounty hunter's ambush I want you outside of it when it springs. Not for your protection. For mine," he hastened. "Find Dreya. See if he knows anything about this Gannaya character." _See if he's involved_, he thought but didn't say.

"I've run out of interesting tattoos, you know."

Tamar managed to laugh at that. "Do your best. We'll keep this line open."

As he approached the holo-terminal, it began to beep, signalling an incoming call. After a brief hesitation – an evaluation of whether he truly wanted to be drawn into this – he answered.

The colour of the image was faded. The person in the middle of it wasn't looking directly at the holocam, and the image quality was less than perfect. Nevertheless, he recognised the person being shown instantly.

It was Mission.

"This is a live feed from the holding cell of my ship." Rath Gannaya's voice spoke to him over the holographic image. "Do I now have your full attention now?"

-s-s-

Carth listened to the footsteps. The sound of his heartbeat, and his breathing, almost drowned the external noises out. His hands clenched around the grips of his twin blaster pistols, and his eyes strained, trying to pick out any sign of movement in the darkness.

The fear was intense, howling in the basement of his being, a black, overwhelming tide. It was far beyond anything that was rational. The urge to break and run was powerful, and he struggled to hold it in check. Only the tiny part of him that was still controlled and rational enough to recognise that the fear was not wholly internal – was not wholly his – managed to keep him from succumbing to it entirely.

The footsteps stopped.

If he hadn't recognised the import of the quiet snap-hiss – and reacted to it immediately and instinctively by throwing himself flat to the floor – he would have been cut in half by the brilliant red lightsaber blade that sliced straight through the shelf full of packing crates at his side.

In desperation, Carth started scrambling forwards on hands and knees. A fraction later and the lightsaber started to chase after him, guided by the Force. He stumbled to his feet as the lightsaber began to gain, breaking into a sprint. The lightsaber blade cast wildly shifting shadows, its tip slicing through the shelves' supports as it span.

Suddenly there was a wrenching shriek of tortured metal, and the aisle of shelves started collapsing around him, the top halves breaking off and concertinaing over against the next aisle. Packing crates began to fall around him in a thunderous cascade, smashing apart on the plastocrete and spilling their contents.

Carth dodged frantically. Something slammed into his right shoulder, staggering him and sending it instantly numb. Something else smashed apart mere centimetres behind his heels. He flung himself forward, full length . . .

And made it clear, just barely, as the shelves collapsed entirely.

He gasped raggedly, back pressed flat to the warehouse wall as the din faded, swallowing hard. The numbness in his shoulder was blossoming into howling pain.

Everything was motionless. Everything was quiet. He realised then that he'd managed to lose track of the Dark Jedi – the Catcher – entirely. The monstrous, irrational fear started to swell once more.

Someone laughed – a rising cacophony that echoed crazily. "Here kitty-kitties. Don't be shy."

The Catcher, Carth had come to realise over the past interminable minutes of cat and mouse, was quite, quite mad.

Yolanda opened fire, brilliant red blaster fire lighting up the air at precisely the spot from which the laughter and voice had originated. There was nothing there. The Catcher, obviously, had been using some kind of voice throwing trick.

Carth heard footsteps, quick and quiet, moving in the direction Yolanda had fired from. Immediately he rolled one of the grenades he'd grabbed blind from the office safe towards the sound. It was only after he'd already released it that he realised he had no idea what sort it was.

An incendiary.

The flash was dazzling. Before he flinched away, eyes briefly screwing shut against the glare, he caught a brief glimpse of the Catcher, lit up in silhouette. The fallen packing crates and their scattered contents caught fire, the blaze spreading rapidly. When his eyes opened again, the Catcher was rolling on the hard plastocrete ground, struggling to put out the flames that had caught in his robe.

Carth took a pot shot at him but missed narrowly. As he attempted to steady his aim, the edge of a Force wave buffeted him, sending him spinning sideways. Then both the fire alarm and sprinkler systems went off simultaneously.

He was drenched to the skin in seconds.

Through the torrents of water, he caught a brief glimpse of Yolanda sprinting for the exit. The Catcher had made it back to his feet, backlit by fire, his lightsaber igniting red. Carth tried to shoot him again, but the lightsaber intercepted this time, deflecting the blaster bolt aside.

Then he too decided that discretion was the better part of valour, sprinting after Yolanda.

-s-s-

"You're going to go through with the exchange, aren't you?" Yuthura asked quietly.

"I . . . have to." It was difficult to look at her.

She grabbed his jaw, fingers cold and strong, pulling his face around until their eyes met and locked.

"Her life is price I'm not prepared to pay." His voice was soft but emphatic. "Her life, above anything, is something I'm not prepared to gamble with."

Yuthura's expression was tight and hard. Her voice, when she finally spoke again, matched it. "And what is to stop them simply killing you the moment they get their hands on you? You trust Gannaya's word?"

"No. But I do trust his greed. I trust the fact that I'm worth over twice as much to him alive as dead. And if you're willing to go up against a former Dark Lord of the Sith simply for the sake of money, greed is a very strong driving Force indeed."

It was obvious from the look in her eyes that she didn't remotely share that trust.

"I'm not giving up, Yuthura. When Mission is safe, the game changes. But until then we play it by their rules. We do what they say, when they say."

"And do you think Mission would agree to what you're doing? Would she want you to trade your life for hers?"

"Of course she wouldn't!" he snapped, frustration bubbling over. "But she isn't being asked."

Yuthura bared her teeth. "You should have tried to play him for more time. With more time we could have . . ."

"We wouldn't have got more time. Gannaya isn't stupid. He knows that it's in his interests to rush this through as fast as possible."

A furious hissing note escaped her throat. For a moment, he sensed the Force gathering around her, dark and swirling. Then it bled away, all at once. She turned away, stalking across to a viewport that gave a spectacular view of the glowing, fluctuating gasses of the Maw. He suspected she wasn't truly seeing it.

"I need you to help me on this, Yuthura."

"You need me to help package you up and sell you down the river to a bunch of bounty hunters." Her voice was curiously mild, none of her anger reflected in it. "You need my help to do the same thing to you that you refuse to contemplate doing to Mission."

"If you want to look at it that way. But she's a fifteen-year-old girl with her entire life ahead of her. I'm a Dark Lord of the Sith responsible for the deaths of billions. In my place, you would make the same choice. You did make the same choice, very recently." He walked up until he stood directly behind her.

"You bastard," she said finally. "Making me feel again . . . making me feel like _this_."

He touched her shoulder, able to feel the tension in her. "Like I said, I need your help. I need your help to do this. And afterwards I need your help getting out."

Finally she turned back to face him. He hadn't known what he expected to see, but she was utterly blank. Utterly blank and pale, feelings shuttered away.

"I'm sorry."

Something flickered briefly, and was gone again, too fleeting to interpret. He wanted to say something else; to hear her say something else. But they'd already had nearly ten minutes of the thirty under the deadline they'd been given. Time was ticking

"There is one other, unconnected thing." He held a datapad out to her, businesslike, as cold as he could manage.

She glanced down at it, and took it from him reluctantly.

"I need you to take this back to HK – have him interpret it."

She opened her mouth – protestation at such an irrelevancy – but then glanced down. Scanned it quickly, blinking. Then she nodded.

"Thank you." He started to turn and walk away.

She grabbed his wrist, stopping him. "No. We don't part like this."

They stood face to face, neither saying anything. After a brief pause, he leant forward, kissing her. She kissed back hard, almost ferocious, before breaking off abruptly.

Her face set fixedly, she drew away from him and strode off quickly, without so much as a goodbye.

-s-s-

The narrow footbridge vibrated in time to their pounding footsteps as they ran hard, side by side. Beneath them, the icy cold waters of Calius saj Leeloo's lone river ran fast and straight in its artificial crystal bed.

Carth's breath came in thin, wheezing gasps, his lungs straining and his leg muscles burning with effort. The fear was consuming, his heart hammering so hard it felt like it was in danger of exploding inside his chest. He told himself that it wasn't real, over and over again, until it became a kind of mantra and lost all meaning. Neither body nor mind was willing to believe him.

A shadowy figure loomed in front them, clothed in ragged black, blocking the way. A lightsaber dangled from its hand, unignited.

He tried to put the brakes on, almost sliding over as he staggered to a halt. Next to him, Yolanda made a strangled noise that might have started out as a yelp. Their blasters raised and fired nearly simultaneously.

The figure didn't even flinch, blaster shots passing through it as if it wasn't there.

It wasn't. A moment later, it faded and vanished into thin air, nothing more than a phantom. There was a chuckle, directly behind them, caught up with them in that brief delay.

Carth whirled and fired, but the Catcher's lightsaber was already igniting, sweeping across and intercepting the shot. This time it was deflected straight back at him, catching him in his already injured shoulder. He fell back with a grunt, the pain shattering, his blaster skittering from his grasp as he hit the floor awkwardly.

Before the Catcher could move in and finish him, Yolanda opened fire, both of her blaster pistols blazing. The Dark Jedi managed to intercept the first few shots, lightsaber blade whirling, but then one got through, catching him in the side and making him stagger. It looked for a second or so as if he was going to go down, another blaster shot punching through and clipping his hip.

Then he extended his hand. Carth saw incandescent orange energy jag between it and Yolanda's torso, the afterimage imprinting on his retinas. A muffled cry was dragged from her throat and she staggered forwards, dropping to knees.

A second flash of blazing orange energy. She collapsed face forwards, shoulders heaving, her breath coming in harsh, sawing gasps. The Catcher kicked her fallen guns away, into the river.

Carth forced himself to move, crawling for his own dropped weapon.

The Catcher caught his movement, and stepped over Yolanda, straight towards him. A gesture, and the blaster was whisked away, just as Carth's fingers started to close around it. Then pain filled him, more of the dire orange energy flashing. This time it leapt from the centre of his own chest, straight to the Catcher's hand. With it went all his strength, leaving him barely able to breathe.

Another chuckle. The Catcher stepped forward, seemingly gaining in vigour, completely unaffected by his blaster wounds. He planted a foot against Carth's chest and pushed him down, onto his back.

Standing over him, looking down, a brilliant white grin split his darkly handsome, perplexingly human face. "You are Carth." He spoke the words as if tasting them. "I saw you, in her thoughts. She liked you, even though the two of you had only just met."

Carth glimpsed movement behind the Catcher's shoulder; managed to rein the growing fury in. His mouth moved, as if to say something, but the only sound that emerged from his throat was a thin, breathy gasp.

The Catcher's grin became a frown, and he leant closer. "You want to say something to me? I'm listening."

There was more movement behind the Catcher. Carth's lips worked again, producing no more sound than before.

The Catcher sighed, seeming almost frustrated. "Try not to fear. The crossing comes as a relief, no matter how hard a person clings on to life. Death is always more painful for those who live on."

A shadow passed across the Catcher's back. Surprise flashed across his face – realisation that he'd been tricked – and he started to turn . . .

Yolanda snapped the collar from her pocket around the Catcher's neck, switching it on just as Force lightning cracked from him to her. It struck her in the chest, hurling her back against the railings, where she crumpled soundlessly and lay still.

The Catcher reeled, lightsaber falling from his grasp as his hands clawed at his throat. The collar was a disruption collar, cutting off brain from body. He stumbled clumsily sideways.

Carth kicked out hard with both feet, arching his back and connecting squarely with his chest. The Catcher overbalanced, colliding with, and then plunging silently over, the railings. A second or so later there was an insignificant sounding splash.

After a time – seconds rather than minutes – Carth groaned and hauled himself to his feet. He staggered over to where Yolanda had fallen, dropping to his knees beside her. Groggily he groped for her wrist. Fear spiked as he felt nothing. He shifted his grip, trying slightly further up her arm.

There was something, very faint. A pulse.

Weak, but definitely there.

-s-s-

Something moved, swift and stealthy in the otherwise total stillness of docking bay six.

In the soft glow from the bay's dimmed lights, its polished surface gleamed – the dull red colour of dried blood. As it reached the door to a maintenance airlock, the figure stopped, bending over, and carefully removed a wall panel at around waist height.

Quickly and efficiently HK-47 rewired the circuitry connecting the airlock doors to the station's monitoring system, so that when the airlock was operated, it would no longer cause a warning to be displayed in station control. Once the rewiring was completed to the assassin droid's satisfaction, it replaced the wall panel, and operated the airlock's inner doors.

Less than a minute later, HK stepped outside, into hard vacuum and the radiation of the Maw, commencing the long walk round towards docking bay three.

-s-s-

The Force vanished for Tamar when he got within six metres of the bulkhead door leading to docking bay three. He had been expecting it. Indeed, he had been trying to prepare himself for it mentally for the past few minutes. It still came as a shock though.

It made him break stride, the sense of disorientation intense. Even wearing a disrupter collar, or in a stasis cell, you were still dimly aware of the Force around you, even if you couldn't quite manage to reach it. Here there was nothing. It was as if one of his senses had been abruptly cut off, and he suddenly felt almost insanely vulnerable and exposed. Utterly alone.

It was easy to see why Juhani had been so badly affected by it.

He reminded himself that there was a time, and not so long ago, when he had simply been Tamar De'Nolo, soldier, with absolutely no conception of the force, let alone that he might be able to touch it. It helped, slightly. With a deep breath, he continued forward. The bulkhead doors slid open in front of him.

They were waiting for him.

"You must be Rath Gannaya," he said to the neatly attired, bearded figure a step or two in front of the others. Flanking him was a huge looking Trandoshan and a pair of extremely hard looking human mercenaries. Amid these others, Gannaya looked out of place – too refined and civilised by far.

Tamar particularly noted the cylindrical metal tank that was floating on top of a repulsor trolley a few paces behind them.

Rath smiled. It was a politician's smile, and didn't reach his eyes – which were looking him up and down in apparent fascination. "And you're Tamar De'Nolo. Darth Revan. Nice to finally meet you. I'm so glad we could be civilised about all this."

Tamar nodded towards the tank. "I take it that's the ysalamari? Interesting species."

A flicker showed in Rath's eyes – disquiet maybe – but it was quickly covered over. "You know ysalamari then?" His tone was bland.

"Well, not socially."

A dry chuckle. "You're not quite what I expected, even from our earlier conversation. Shall we get down to business?"

"As soon as I get confirmation from Yuthura about Mission." He touched his earpiece. "Yuthura?"

-s-s-

Yuthura stood motionless; feet planted apart, arms folded behind her back, in the middle of the arboretum on the top level of Dreya's Bastion. A transparisteel dome covered a relatively small, but lush garden, bathed in the light given off by the Maw. T3 was completely still and quiet beside her.

She watched the numbers above the turbolift doors ten metres in front of her, shifting rapidly.

The numbers stopped. The lift door slid open with a soft whisper, and three figures stepped out, onto the gravel path in front of her.

On the right was a cyborg. He matched the description that Zaalbar had given for one of the mercs involved in the Taris attack. Yuthura noticed that it looked like he had several bits of the cybernetic portion of his body missing. Locations where there had once been weaponry, she presumed, removed to comply with Dreya's regulations. Kreed, was the name they'd been given.

On the left was a tall and extremely beautiful Zeltron woman with long, dark hair.

It was the smaller figure walking between them that her attention fixed on though. A pretty and extremely defiant looking female Twi'lek in her mid-teens. She looked healthy, if not in good temper.

T3, after finishing scanning her, gave an affirmative beep.

"Yuthura?" Tamar's voice crackled in her ear.

For a moment, she didn't answer. If she embraced the inner darkness – struck down the cyborg and the Zeltron with the power she could call – there would be no need for the trade to go ahead . . ..

But no. She exhaled, letting go of the temptation – you could always let it go – and finally found her voice. "She's here."

-s-s-

The snow speeder garages of the Republic base on Hoth were cold and dingy. They'd been badly damaged – first when the Sith initially took the base from the Republic garrison, and then again a couple of days ago, when Republic forces drove out the token occupying force the Sith had left behind. A portable forcefield generator had been used to close off a huge gap blown in the front wall, and through it, the night sky could be glimpsed. For the first time in days, the hurricane force blizzard had died back, and the weather outside was reasonably clear.

Bastila spotted Canderous, backlit by the light of the fire he'd made on the stained and pitted plastocrete floor. He'd been out hunting earlier, despite conditions that could kill a person in minutes if the heating elements of their environment suit were to fail.

From the look of things, he'd caught himself an ice wompa, its dirty white hide hanging up, in the process of being cured.

At the sound of her approaching, he turned around. After looking at her face for a moment, he grunted. "Your puppy die, princess?"

She snorted, moving nearer to the fire. Her breath left little curls of steam on the air. "No. I've been recalled."

"Eh?"

"To Coruscant." She told him quickly and concisely about her earlier conversation with Master Mida.

When she'd finished he just made another vague, grunting sound. "Idiots. Still, sounds like you're learning how to be a proper Jedi."

Bastila's brows furrowed together. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"'_As soon as I am able to_'. Nice amount of ambiguity there. Gives you a good degree of leeway." He leant forward, lighting an object she couldn't quite make out in the fire. "The Jedi always were the best liars in the galaxy. Absolute masters of deception, able to tie the truth in knots without ever muttering a word that isn't – from one twisted perspective or another – completely factual. 'Course, most of the time the people they're lying to are themselves. But still, credit where credit's due."

As he straightened, Bastila saw the object was a cigar. He drew on it deeply, exhaling smoke. She decided not to let herself be drawn on the obvious attempt at provocation. "They want me to help them track down Revan, I think."

"Well, that's a given." He tilted his head back letting out a long, contented breath. "So, now you're torturing yourself about not jumping immediately to attention like a good little toy soldier. Right?"

"No, actually I'm not." A pause. "I'm sure that, on this one thing, I did make the right choice." She sighed, her gaze drifting to the crackling flames. "I just wish . . . I wish it wasn't a choice I had to make."

He looked at her more closely, frowning. She could tell he was perplexed, her response not falling within the expected parameters.

"The right choice can lead to wrong choices further down the line." She wasn't sure if she was trying to explain to him, or herself.

He laughed abruptly – gravel rasping against broken stone. "You're thinking too much again, princess. Ought to watch that. I hear it does terrible things to a person's complexion."

"Can you ever manage to be serious?"

"I'm always serious. Us Mandalorians aren't noted for our sense of humour." He exhaled another puff of smoke.

This time it tickled at her nostrils, making her flinch and cough. "Do you have to do that? It smells awful."

A contemptuous snort. "You're standing next to the carcass of a butchered wompa, and you're complaining about the smell of my cigar?"

"They do awful things to a person's lungs," she added tartly.

Canderous tapped the side of his neck. "I figure my implant takes care of that. And if it doesn't . . ." A shrug. "Well I never figured on dying of old age anyway. Besides, I only smoke 'em on the most special of occasions."

She looked around at the abandoned, battle-scarred garage. "And this is your idea of a special occasion, is it?"

He turned his gaze away from her, out towards the forcefield-covered gap in the wall, and the endless fields of ice that stretched beyond it. "Now, let's see. I'm alive. Weather's fine. And tomorrow we go to war. Yeah, I think this qualifies as special."

-s-s-

"Yuthura Ban?" Kreed asked.

The Twi'lek gave a single sharp nod.

Interesting looking woman, the Mandalorian reflected as her eyes bored into him. If you were into the deeply scary. "Shall we get this done then?"

Yuthura opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted before she could say anything.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Mission twisted round in his grasp, her voice strident. "You said I was going to be traded back to my friends. She's . . ."

"Quiet, blue. This is the arrangement. Mess it up and Rath'll feed you through the _Shadow Dancer's_ garbage disposal."

"But she's a Sith!" A pause, before Mission amended. "Was a Sith. I don't know. She's not my freaking friend though. Where's Tamar? Where's Zaalbar?"

"Mission, I know this is probably difficult for you," Yuthura started. "But Tamar asked me to do this because Zaalbar and the others aren't here right now. You'll be reunited with them as soon . . ."

"And I should believe you because?"

Kreed let out a loud sigh of exasperation. "Because the alternative to going with her, is coming back with us. And Rath will kill you. You're cleverer than this blue. You don't have to play stupid here."

Thankfully, the utility droid chose that moment to roll forward, beeping.

"Tee?" Mission's attention suddenly snapped away from Yuthura, fixing on the little droid.

"Beep-woo-bop-beep."

"Having problems?" Rath's voice came acerbically over the comm. link in Kreed's ear.

"Just an over-emotional reunion," he responded dryly. "I'm sure now that emotions have calmed down we're all ready to proceed." He looked at Yuthura as he said this.

"Mission?" Yuthura asked quietly.

Mission eventual gave a nod.

_Finally_.

-s-s-

"Happy?" Rath asked, eyebrow raised.

In response, Tamar simply nodded. He hadn't expected to feel this calm.

A gesture from Rath sent the two humans and the Trandoshan advancing on him. He stood his ground, extending his arms out from his sides, waiting peaceably.

None too gently, his arms were dragged behind his back, manacles snapping shut around his wrists. A second or so later a disruptor collar clicked into place around his throat. One of the humans patted him down, searching for hidden weapons.

"Can I trust you enough to leave that thing turned off?" Rath asked. "It'll be far easier for all of us if you can walk under your own power."

Again, Tamar just nodded.

"Everything's done here, Kreed. Release the girl."

-s-s-

HK-47 reached the maintenance airlock that led into docking bay three.

Exposed to vacuum, the radiation levels coming off the Maw Cluster were fiercely intense, but it would be at least another couple of hours before HK started to take any kind of truly debilitating damage to its circuitry from the exposure. The process of re-wiring the airlock's monitoring system was quickly completed, just as it had been on exiting docking bay six.

Once inside, HK started to make its way stealthily towards the sleek bulk of the _Shadow Dancer's_ hull. The assassin droid was enjoying itself. For once, it had a level of work truly appropriate to its talents.

Ahead of it, back turned, what to human eyes would appear nothing more than a slightly elongated shadow stood sentry duty. HK ghosted soundlessly up behind it, but the Defel's communicator beeped at that precise moment, and it started to walk away, talking softly, never for a moment realising the threat it had just avoided.

HK went back to gliding silently towards the _Shadow Dancer_.


	10. Distorted Vision

**10. Distorted Vision**

"So what's the problem? Can't an old man get any rest at all round here?" Jolee's voice, as he climbed the ladder up into the gunship's cramped bridge, was decidedly tetchy.

"A Hutt battlecruiser," Juhani answered calmly, without looking round at him.

Strangely, although events had just taken an abrupt turn for the worse, she felt more at ease and in control of herself than she had since Belaya had picked her up from Taris. It was as if, for her, inner and outer peace had become stuck in some kind of twisted inversely proportional relationship.

Magnified on one of the view screens was a truly titanic – and also quite horrendously ugly – looking vessel.

In the case where a ship was not required to perform any atmospheric manoeuvring, any streamlining or aerodynamic qualities it had were pointless outside of pure aesthetics. If the ship in front of them was anything to go by, then the Hutts clearly understood this fact, and had thus embraced the functional, rather than the stylistic elements of starship design. It resembled an enormous metal brick with engines at one end, a whole multitude of guns at the other, and fighter bays in between. This particular example was heavily battle-scarred, and showed signs of extensive patchwork repairs and additions that made it look like it was suffering from a series of particularly virulent tumourous growths.

"And this was sufficient reason to wake me from my nap, was it? I've seen Hutt battlecruisers before, you know. They don't get any prettier from repeat viewing."

"If we hadn't woken you up, you would only have complained all the louder afterwards," Juhani stated reasonably.

"Bah, when you've got to my age complaining is one of life's few remaining pleasures. You youngsters are such killjoys with your damned _logic_." He peered at the screen intently. "So why, particularly, is this Hutt battlecruiser worthy of my attention?"

"It's heading into the Maw," one of the gunship's crew stated by way of answer.

"Well, we are near the borders of Hutt space. And I don't think I'd be going too far out on a limb to suggest that Kemo Dreya draws a substantial portion of his clientele from among those of a Huttese persuasion."

He was concerned though, Juhani could tell. He was simply voicing the innocent explanation as a matter of form, to ensure someone had done so. "About a minute ago it blasted one of Dreya's relay stations," she informed him. "Even for a Hutt, I think that would probably be considered impolite as a conversational opener."

"Ah." A pause. "Do we know who it might belong to?"

"I believe that Director Marshall is looking into the matter. The markings on it indicate its name is the _Rancorous._"

Jolee nodded vaguely at Juhani's words. On screen, the Hutt battlecruiser started releasing clouds of tiny-looking objects in its wake – pulse mines, effectively blocking anyone from directly following its route.

"Do you think Dreya betrayed him, then?" Juhani murmured, quiet enough that only Jolee would hear.

"More likely one of his guests or employees. Why destroy the relay otherwise?" He paused again, voice dropping even further. "Or it could, of course, be the other case we discussed."

That somebody on board their own vessel had a grudge against Revan, and was acting as an informant against him. It would explain why both pirates and Sith had been able to lays ambushes for the _Winding Way_. "I think, perhaps, while there are still alternative possibilities, we should not get too paranoid about those on our own side."

"Nor should we blind ourselves to something simply because we don't like the idea." He sighed. "But yes, for the moment I tend to agree."

"Should we follow?"

"Jedi Juhani," he murmured, ever so slightly reproachful. "You don't need to wake an old man from his shuteye to make that kind of decision for you, now do you?"

After a moment, she nodded, feeling her cheeks heat slightly beneath their covering of short fur. "No, I do not. I do, however, have need of a pilot who is force sensitive, to navigate through the black holes' gravitational fields. We can clearly no longer follow directly along the marked lane. From the stories you tell, you were quite an accomplished pilot in your youth."

"And in my middle-age too. Damn it, if I'd thought anybody was actually paying attention to anything I was saying, I'd have shut the hell up a long time ago." A rueful exhalation. "That'll teach me, won't it?"

She thought he seemed pleased though, despite the bluster. He stepped forward, tapping the man currently occupying the pilot's position on the shoulder. "Hey there sonny, I think you're sitting in my chair."

-s-s-

Rath Gannaya looked over his shoulder as Kreed entered the _Shadow Dancer's_ bridge. "Everyone accounted for?"

"Everyone accounted for," Kreed confirmed heavily.

He didn't, Rath noted, sound particularly enthusiastic, but that was something that could be addressed later. It failed to put a dampener on his mood, which was quietly ecstatic. "Theda, my dear. Could you contact the lovely Mr. Dreya?"

"Aye, aye, Captain." They shared a brief smile.

A second or so later a holographic representation of Kemo Dreya's face appeared, blue-tinged and ghostly. The expression it bore suggested that he'd inadvertently swallowed a wasp. As Rath sat down in front of the comm. station, the expression became, if anything, even sourer. "What is it now Gannaya? My patience with you is being sorely tested."

Rath smiled broadly, knowing it was just about the most infuriating thing he could do in the circumstances. "I thought you'd be pleased to know that our business here has been successfully concluded, and we're ready to depart."

Dreya glowered. "Then I will _gladly_ instruct control to open the first available departure slot for you."

"Why, thank you."

The look he got back was cold. "I don't appreciate my hospitality being abused and my neutrality flouted like this, Gannaya."

"Oh, come now . . ."

Dreya overrode him. "Consider yourself banned. Permanently. If you _ever_ show up here again, you'll be met with guns blazing."

Rath raised an eyebrow. "Overreacting a tad, aren't you Kemo? Did I not keep my word perfectly? There wasn't so much as an accidental blaster charge to trouble your sensibilities. Let's not be rash about what was, after all, a simple business deal."

It cut no ice. Not that he'd really expected it to. "Be grateful I don't take any further sanctions. I'm strongly tempted to."

Rath sighed extravagantly. "Well, I'm sad to hear that Kemo, truly I am. And I hope, when you've calmed down slightly, you'll reconsider." If anything Dreya's glower deepened. "But I get the sense from your expression that I'm wasting my words, so I'll just say one more thing. In order to ensure your precious peace, you might want to prevent Revan's vessel from departing anytime inside the next few hours. Of course, that is simply a polite suggestion, and should not in _any_ way be construed as a threat. Now, I'll say goodbye, and hope that the next time we exchange words will be considerably more cordial."

As Dreya started to speak again, Rath cut the line. "Self-righteous bloody ronto lover," he muttered, before turning back to Theda. "Prepare us for departure. We should be receiving an exit lane slot anytime now."

"Already received it," she replied. Her hands moved rapidly over the controls in front of her, initiating the start-up sequence.

_If I'd known how smoothly this was going to go, I'd have got something in to celebrate with. A nice bottle o f . . ._

A teeth-rattling vibration juddered through the _Shadow Dancer's_ superstructure, before dying back. The instruments in front of Theda lit up in an array of brilliantly flashing red, several dozen different warning telltales beeping simultaneously in strident discord.

It became abruptly clear that something was very wrong indeed.

"What's the problem?" Rath's sense of burgeoning elation snapped off instantly – akin to being dropped without warning into the middle of an icy lake from a great height.

Theda was muttering beneath her breath, her face lit up by incarnadine neon glow. The warning telltales continued to beep incessantly. "The main drive's dead." Her voice was clinical.

"What do you mean, the main drive is dead?" Rath leant over her shoulder and tried to make some kind of sense of the displays. Suddenly, his heart was hammering in his chest. _This is how the house of cards collapses . . ._

"I mean its dead. Non-operational. Completely frakked. Choose your own profanity. Main and auxiliary power lines have been severed, and there's some kind of problem being reported in the main core." Glancing at another pair of telltales, she swore fluently. "And just for good measure, there's no power getting through to the main landing repulsors."

"Shall we go and pay Revan a visit?" Kreed cut in, his voice flat.

In that moment, Rath had a startlingly strong urge to throttle the Mandalorian.

-s-s-

In her mind, Bastila felt them. Thousands of lives spread out around her, linked together by the diffuse touch of her will through the force.

As always, it filled her with a strange, intense mixture of exhilaration and something else that was close to terror. The sense that she was being drawn too thin, spread out over too great a span, and would be lost entirely – cut adrift on the force until she was entirely subsumed – if for some reason her concentration were to fail her. A minute portion of her almost wanted that failure – a tiny voice that whispered at her to jump over the edge of the precipice, and for a brief, shining moment, be free.

As always, she was able to ignore that voice.

At her behest, formations of fighters and capital ships responded to orders in near perfect unison. Actions and reactions meshed, and each individual burning speck of will became a part of a vastly greater whole – a frictionless cog in a gigantic, smoothly oiled machine. She didn't direct tactics or strategy. She simply caused those tactics and strategies to be carried out with maximum efficiency and co-ordination, bolstering moral and will, strengthening resolve, enhancing skill and potential.

Over on the far left flank she felt the agonised flaring of multiple lives extinguishing, and sensed Republic formations wavering, on the verge of collapse. Coolly and calmly she responded, strengthening and reinforcing, soothing away fear and discord, whilst simultaneous reaching out and sapping at the moral of the attacking Sith forces – sowing doubt and confusion through their ranks and causing their strike to falter.

What could have become a fatal turning point, Republic lines punctured and formations disarrayed, the entire left side of the field collapsing in on itself, became nothing more than a slight mishap. As soon as the situation stabilised, her attention moved on, joining a counterthrust stabbing at the heart of the Sith battle force.

More lives extinguished, dark and violent ripples spreading out around her.

She held herself shielded from the worst of the effects, forcing herself to remain fully focused, separated from the horror of it. Her earlier attempts to make herself feel and experience the deaths around her now seemed nothing more than a shocking self-indulgence. In a battle like this, the only sensible thing you could do was try to win and end the fighting, as quickly and cleanly as possible.

A Sith formation fragmented, one of the Rakatan-designed battlecruisers turning tail and retreating under an incoming barrage. A second battlecruiser tried to stand fast, and was caught up in a withering crossfire, every shot aimed at it hitting home with uncanny precision and accuracy.

Then it too, finally, attempted to flee.

It was far too late. Turbolaser blasts from a Republic dreadnaught pulverised its engines, while a heavy frigate strafed it simultaneously in a close pass. Something critical was hit, and the Sith vessel detonated in a brilliant flash.

More than five thousand lives extinguished in a single instant, a howling scream that echoed through the force. As the shockwaves from it washed over her, Bastila shielded herself grimly, fighting down horror and pity – wrestling down the dark memory flashes and tormenting voices from the near past.

Another Sith capital ship was crippled, floating dead in space, fires spreading through its decks. Then the entire centre of the Sith forces began to disintegrate, Republic ships cutting through enemy lines seemingly at will. Bastila forced herself to concentrate all the harder, though she could feel fatigue creeping up on her, dimly aware that her body was trembling with the effort, sweating profusely.

Finally, the disintegration turned into full-scale retreat. Sith vessels disengaged across the board and made desperate leaps to hyperspace. Rather than press and pursue, the Republic forces let them go.

The Battle of Daragba, after raging intensely for over three hours, petered out with a whimper.

Bastila let herself withdraw, returning to her body with a metaphoric crash.

She was shaking. Her breath came short and fast. Briefly she scrunched her eyes closed as the brightness of her surroundings became too much to bear, pressing the heel of her hand against her brow as pain stabbed through her skull.

That, however, was all par for the course when she'd been using battle meditation for a prolonged period. Slowly her breathing slowed and calmed, and the pain in her head subsided somewhat, her eyes readjusting to her surroundings. She picked up the water bottle beside her and drank deeply. Then she unfolded herself and stood up, legs trembling from being locked in the same position for so long.

She felt cold – almost panicked. It had all been too easy.

Around twenty thousand dead, over four thousand of those on the Republic side. And that counted as too easy. She wasn't sure if it was more appropriate to laugh, or to weep. But the fact remained, utterly incontrovertible.

Darth Malefic had not been there.

There had been no dark presence, looming over the battlefield, crowned in madness, lashing out of the Republic forces and striving to shatter them. This had been no repeat of Tylace. And although there was a part of her that was desperately, giddily relieved over avoiding that confrontation, there was another part of her that was equally as desperately afraid.

It meant that they had arrived too late.

Rather than being won, the battle had been lost before it was even fought.

-s-s-

"W-Wait a minute. You did what!" Mission's voice rose stridently, incredulous. "You traded Tamar for me? You traded him to those . . . those slime sucking nerf-herders? You . . . you can't do that." She stopped in her tracks, hands on hips, her lekku quivering defiantly.

Yuthura stopped too and, for a moment, just looked at her.

For some reason it brought back uncomfortable flashes of herself at that age: already a pleasure slave, far too old for the number of years she'd lived. Her own fires had been buried deep inside, behind layers of masks and shackles carefully constructed for the sake of her sanity and survival, a slow burning fuse that would eventually become ferocious rage and hatred. On the surface, the differences were profound, but there were also similarities that were almost painful.

"How, precisely, do you suggest I should have stopped him?" she asked quietly.

Mission's jaw clenched. "You should have done something."

_You should have done something. Found another way_. A cuttingly precise summation of her own thoughts on the matter. She hid a grimace, looking round at the sterile, curving corridor they were walking along. One of Dreya's employees was walking the other way, but he barely gave them a second glance. "Let's keep moving. We're not having this conversation here."

Mission's arms folded across her chest defiantly. "I _don't_ take orders from you. Let's get that one clear right now. You might not care anything about what happens to Tamar, but I do. He's my friend. If you think I'm just going to be a good little girl, and do as I'm told, and let this happen. Well, you're . . . you're wrong."

"Yes, what could someone like me possibly care about Tamar," Yuthura murmured, barely audible beneath her breath. Then, "I _really_ don't have time to indulge you in this, Mission." Her head tails flicked, signing rapidly as she spoke those dismissive words. _We can't talk here. Odds are we're being listened to. I am _not_ abandoning him. I know you don't trust me, but we are on the same side here. Please try to believe that._

After a fractional delay, Mission signed back: _fine_. She didn't look happy. She did, however, stop protesting – although Yuthura got the sense that any co-operation was extremely provisional.

A few minutes later, they were entering docking bay six, walking rapidly.

"That's your ship?" Mission asked warily. They stopped in front of the _Ajunta's Blade_, Yuthura taking a remote control from one of her pockets and lowering the entrance ramp.

"In a manner of speaking. Tamar borrowed it, actually. From a pair of Defel brothers." Yuthura started up the ramp. "We should probably have returned it before now, but events have been . . . rather hectic of late."

She trailed off as she realised that Mission wasn't following her anymore.

She'd stopped at the bottom of the ramp, and had a look in her eyes that suggested she was about to bolt. "W-What did you just say?"

"Mission?" The brief flash of annoyance faded as she saw sudden and genuine fear on the Twi'lek girl's face.

"About Defels. You said Tamar borrowed it from some 'Defel brothers'."

"That's correct." Yuthura walked slowly back down the ramp. A bad feeling was growing inside her. "Kreish and Navesch, their names were. They were working as the bodyguards to Suvam Tan. You know the Rodian, don't you?" Then, more urgently. "Mission? What's wrong?"

Mission started to back off steadily. "Only, Rath employs a whole bunch of Defels. Some kind of monastic warrior order of them, or something. They call themselves 'the Brothers'."

It was like a knife going in.

Suddenly a whole number of things made a lot more sense – like how Gannaya had managed to track them here. Yuthura swore, hitting the earpiece she wore, opening a channel to T3. If the Ajunta's Blade allowed Gannaya to do more than simply track them . . . if it allowed them to listen in on the cockpit . .

A short conversation later, she was ever so slightly reassured.

According to T3, just under twenty minutes ago, the _Shadow Dancer_ had requested – and been granted – a departure slot. As of yet, it had made no move to leave, although station sensors had detected a brief and abortive attempt from the vessel to power-up. All of which strongly suggested HK had gotten through successfully and managed to complete the first stage of his task.

So not quite as bad as she'd for a moment feared. But possibly bad enough.

She broke off the conversation with the utility droid as she realised that Mission had made it quickly and stealthily across the landing bay, back to the bulkhead doors leading to the rest of the station. "What are you doing?"

Mission whirled guiltily. Her head tails flattened. Her expression became defiant, and the sense Yuthura received over the force indicated that the girl was entirely ready to fight if she had to.

Yuthura started walking towards her. "We don't have time for this, Mission."

"How do I know that anything you've told me is true?" The surface was tough, but Yuthura could detect turmoil and lonely uncertainty within her. "For all I know, you could be working with them, and this is all some kind of . . ." A nervous flick of her head tails. ". . . ruse or something."

"T3 . . ."

"Is a droid. Droids can be reprogrammed, their memories wiped."

Frustration spiked. There was a brief moment where the urge to reach into Mission's head and simply _make_ her co-operate became powerfully appealing. She shoved it away. That was a breach of trust from which they'd never recover.

"You don't know," she said eventually. "There is nothing I can tell you that you can't explain away, if you want to." Her words sounded clumsy to her ears – nigh on idiotic. "But what are you going to do otherwise? Where are you going to go from here on your own? How are you going to help Tamar?"

"I'm not helpless."

"No, you're not. Which is the reason I need you to help me here."

For a moment, it looked like Mission was wavering. Then her expression tightened again. "You were a Sith. The headmistress of the Korriban academy, right?"

Yuthura nodded.

"So why do you care about him? Why does this matter to you?"

Yuthura let out a breath. "There are just about a million different reasons and answers I could give. But the one that matters – the one that matters above anything else to me – is that he is my friend."

And that was, she realised, absolutely true. Love – whatever else they had, or might potentially have – paled before that single fact. "So we do have at least that one thing common, even if there is nothing else." She hesitated, wishing she was better at this, and that the words came easier instead of clogging in her throat. "He was my friend when I hadn't had anyone who I could call a friend in so many years I'd almost forgotten that the possibility still existed. He was my friend where there was no possible advantage to him, and by rights he should have simply killed me." She fixed Mission's gaze with her own. "And I absolutely refuse to lose him like this."

Finally, Mission nodded. "I – I believe you."

Yuthura flinched, and felt something inside that was acutely painful. A year ago, she could have spoken exactly the same words, in exactly the same tone – except they would have been carefully constructed manipulation, designed to give her a hook on which to gut their recipient.

Mission stepped away from the bulkhead doors. "So, what do we do? And before you start, it is we. No getting me to safety 'because it's what he wanted', because honestly, he's a bit, well . . . thick sometimes. I'm sure you've noticed, right?"

She managed to smile. "I've noticed."

That smile faded quickly. There was no magic plan of action they'd worked out in advance, beyond the first step of HK preventing the Shadow Dancer leaving Dreya's Bastion, buying time to come up with something else.

Unfortunately, _something else_ was proving elusive.

She didn't answer Mission verbally. Instead, her head tails signed with a lot more confidence than she felt. _HK-47 has stopped them from departing for the moment._

The assassin droid would, by this point, have switched over to the primary purpose for which Revan had originally built it, and would continue at that purpose until it was destroyed. Yuthura didn't dare let herself hope it might succeed.

_So now we visit Dreya. We put the pressure on. We get him to turn that pressure onto them_.

-s-s-

The Defel stopped. It had obviously heard something, from the way its posture suddenly became tensed – hyper-alert.

It began to look closely around the droid storage bay, peering between the towering hulks of the battlefield assault droids, scarred surfaces gleaming softly in the dim light. It gilded past a deactivated utility droid and a rack containing a variety of mechanical limbs, a dark and haunting wraith.

A few metres beyond the utility droid, there was a humanoid droid made of dull red metal. For a moment, the Defel stopped in front of it, peering at it curiously. It was just as obviously deactivated as the utility droid though, slumped forward like a carelessly discarded marionette, utterly silent, with no hum of latent power.

The Defel moved on.

There was a flicker of movement – a soft whirr of activating power cells. The Defel didn't even have time to turn around. There was a soft thud, accompanied by a wet and unpleasant tearing sound. A mechanical hand clamping over the Defel's mouth stopped it making any other sound.

A second or two later, it was lowered to the floor.

Dead, the light absorbing properties of the Defel's hide gradually faded, and its bulk assumed a greater solidity. Congealing blood slowly spread out around it.

"Observation: you should have kept on walking, meatbag."

-s-s-

"What the hell have you done?"

At the sound of Rath Gannaya's voice, edged by very definite anger, Tamar shifted from where he was lying on the cell's single bunk, fingers interlocked behind his head, and sat up. "Well, for about the last half hour or so, I've been staring at the ceiling," he stated mildly. "It is not, to be honest, a particularly interesting ceiling."

Silence dragged.

"You know very well what I mean." Rath was slightly calmer this time, but his expression bore a distinctly fixed look that suggested this was merely a surface sheen. "What have you done to my ship?"

Tamar had felt the vibration that passed through the _Shadow Dancer_ when it had tried to power up. He did indeed know exactly what Rath meant.

_I owe you one, HK._

He scratched his chin. The stubble indicated a need to shave. "Let's look at the situation calmly, shall we? I'm inside a two and a half metre square cell, behind a battlefield grade forcefield. There are four tanks in the room outside, one or more – and possibly all – of which contain ysalamari, cutting me very effectively off from the force. And on top of that, I'm wearing a disruptor collar. You don't do things by half measures, do you Rath? Should I still call you Rath by the way, or is Mr. Gannaya more appropriate now this is a prisoner-captor type of relationship?" He kept his expression carefully impassive throughout.

"It would be very easy for me to kill you."

Standing beside Rath, Tamar noted the big and extremely tough looking cyborg carefully. A Mandalorian, by the visible clan tattoo on the arm that was still flesh and bone. Dromos clan, his brain supplied, the information obviously coming from that same shadowy place where his detailed knowledge of the tactics of space battle resided.

It certainly wasn't anything he had any memory of learning.

Before answering, he lay back down on the bunk, and resumed looking up at the not particularly interesting ceiling. "Yes it would. Very easy indeed, I'd imagine. I note the air vents. You could gas me without ever dropping the forcefield, I'm sure. And this disruptor collar? Slightly heavier than one might expect. An explosive charge, I take it? Sensible precaution."

After disabling the ship's drive unit, HK's next move should have been to slice its way into the _Shadow Dancer's_ security system. Tamar was betting that this cell was wired up to the gills with monitors and microphones. Hopefully, the information he was giving out might prove useful, if it was heard.

"Would you like me to have Kreed here start breaking bits of you?" Rath's tone was equally as conversational as Tamar's.

"Not particularly. Nice of you to offer, though."

The skin around Rath's eyes creased. "Your failure to grasp the particulars of your current situation is remarkable."

Tamar continued to stare at the ceiling. "I think I grasp the situation quite well, actually. We made a deal, and here we are, deal completed. I'm in your power. You can kill me at will – although it will cost you at least two-thirds of my bounty if you do so. You can torture me. Maybe if you expend enough effort at it, you can break me. I'm not going to make any idiotic boasts here. What you can't make me do, though, is willingly co-operate just because you're having a few technical difficulties."

A sideways glance showed Rath thumbing something inside his pocket. Abruptly, the disruptor collar switched on. With no connection to the force, there was no possible way for Tamar to resist it, and everything around him faded into a gently buzzing fugue state.

-s-s-

"Jedi Bastila!"

At the shout, echoing across one of the _Starlight __Phoenix__'s_ landing bays, Bastila stopped and turned around.

It was Lieutenant Jansa – the science corps archaeologist who'd accompanied her on Drumond Kaas – looking distinctly flushed as she scurried to catch up. Bastila could sense a nervous mixture of excitement and apprehension from the woman, almost boiling over. "Lieutenant?" she prompted calmly.

Jansa came to a halt in front of her, panting and flustered. A transparent sheet flapped in one of her hands, covered in an intricate tracing of lines and arcs drawn in numerous different colours. "Thank the force I caught up with you in time." Her free hand darted nervously through her short-cropped hair as she spoke.

"What's wrong, Lieutenant?"

She looked meaningfully at the two republic commandos flanking Bastila. Bastila gestured that they should continue to the waiting dropship, and she'd catch up. "Well?"

Jansa swallowed. The words tumbled out. "It's the map we found on Drumond Kaas. It's . . . well, I think it's been altered. No, I'm _sure_ it has been altered." Her hand swept through her hair again, leaving it sticking up in sweaty spikes. "I'm sorry. I haven't had any sleep in two . . . three days? The caffa's got me all jittery. What I mean is, it's pointing to the wrong place. Not the place that Bailor Drumond intended it to point to, anyway."

"You're certain?" Bastila knew that the words were stupid even as she spoke them. She could feel Jansa's certainty to the point of panic.

"I . . . look, see these symbols, here, here, here and here?" Her fingers touched points on the transparency. "It's easier to see on the hologram, but that's in one of the labs, halfway across the ship." A rapid headshake. "They don't fit with the rest of the pattern. I've gone over it time and again, and I keep coming to the same, unavoidable conclusion. Velta Laska agrees with me – it's not just me being paranoid here. Someone has deliberately altered it. I can show you my workings, but they're back in my quarters . . ."

"I not questioning you," Bastila told her, peering at the mess of lines and markings and struggling to make the slightest bit of sense of it. "But I thought we'd already been over this in the briefing?"

Jansa flushed. "We were too hasty. We didn't look closely enough, because at a glance it is very convincing."

"So what you're saying is: Darth Malefic has not only got here and away again before us, he's also altered the map, so now we have no way of even finding where, or what, he was looking for." Her voice sounded eerily calm, which made it a liar.

"Erm . . . possibly not."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, um, the alterations seem like they where made quite some time ago. As in years ago, rather than simply months."

"Revan," she murmured, as she stared at the sheet. "Revan altered it to cover his back trail."

"Why not simply destroy it entirely in that case?" Jansa sounded puzzled. "It wasn't like the Rakatan star maps you described. It wasn't self-regenerating. It was just a lump of metal."

_Because at the stage he found it, Revan wasn't a destroyer_, Bastila thought. _He might not have been a Jedi anymore, but he wasn't yet a Sith_. She looked up from the transparency. "If you can tell it's been altered, can you extrapolate back to what it was altered from?"

"No," Jansa shook her head emphatically. "I've even tried pushing models through the ship's computer. The person who altered it – Revan, or whoever – knew exactly what they were doing. They didn't simply alter the symbols needed to change the location it showed. They also altered any symbols you could use to interpolate the original ones from."

Bastila was now distinctly puzzled. "So that would mean . . . Malefic has the altered version of the map too, and if the alterations are as hard to detect as you say . . ." She stopped herself and shook her head distractedly. "No. No, if he didn't find anything, he wouldn't have left. He would still have been here when we arrived. Which clearly he wasn't."

"Unless he did find something. The map could have been altered to point to something plausible." The excitement dropped abruptly out of Jansa's voice. "Or, say it was Revan for now. Maybe he left notes on the alterations he made. Perhaps it was only the Jedi he didn't want following him. I mean, this Darth Malefic has to have access to information we don't in order to lead him to Drumond Kaas in the first place, doesn't he?"

Which brought them back round to more or less where they'd started.

Before she could say anything else, Canderous's voice interrupted, dry and drawling. "Trust it to be the women keeping us all waiting. Trouble choosing your outfit or something?"

"Patience!" she snapped, turning her attention back to Jansa and pointedly ignoring him. "We need to go down and assess the damage anyway. Perhaps we'll manage to pick up some indicators that aren't obvious from up here." She couldn't manage to feel too optimistic though.

The thought of having to answer the Jedi Council's summons, nothing accomplished except for running smack into a dead end, loomed large.

"I want to come with you, Jedi Bastila. I . . . might be useful."

After a moment's pause, Bastila nodded.

"Finally," she heard Canderous mutter as she turned around.

-s-s-

It was near impossible to have any kind of accurate sense of time whilst under the effects of a disruptor collar. Nevertheless, Tamar had the sense that he hadn't been under for long. Minutes, rather than hours or days.

"He will kill you, you know." The voice was female – rather compelling. "Don't overestimate the value he places in your monetary worth."

He looked up. Rath and Kreed were gone. In their place was a Zeltron woman, tall and – as with most of that species – extraordinarily physically attractive. He looked at her face . . .

And suddenly the memory-hallucination he'd had on the orbital station above Coruscant came back. _Her_, pale and silvered by the light of three moons – two white, the smallest red – as she stood upon the balcony of their shared bedchamber.

One face was pale, the other a shade of dusky red-violet. Aside from that, though, they were almost identical. A face that he had, apparently, once burnt off.

Tamar's heart was suddenly thudding as he realised that Rath Gannaya's interest in him was nothing remotely to do with money. He was in a lot more trouble than he'd thought.

She seemed every bit as startled as he was. For a second or so, he could see her struggling to speak. "You know me. You know who I am."

There were stories – myths, legends, and old spacers' tales, which tended to be dismissed by the more educated – of people encountering Zeltrons who looked inexplicably like someone familiar. A lost lover perhaps, or maybe a flame from the past that a person had never entirely managed to move on from. Or simply an unrequited fantasy.

Some, who didn't simply dismiss the whole thing out of hand, theorised that this phenomenon was due to the strong pheromones that Zeltrons gave off; combing with their emotion-altering empathic abilities to subtly – or not so subtly – alter an onlooker's perceptions into seeing whatever it was they most wanted to see. Others went even further, suggesting that a Zeltron's appearance altered genuinely over time to more closely match those external perceptions.

Tamar found himself wondering if this woman would look the same to him if he could still touch the force. "And you don't?" he asked quietly.

One of her facial muscles twitched. "Rath is, in many respects, a very private man. Even with those who are closest to him."

He nodded.

"But you did recognise me – this face you see. I felt the recognition, and your alarm." She might look like her, Tamar thought, but the timbre of her voice was very different – at least from the woman he had encountered on Coruscant.

"'You' were my lover, I think," he said eventually.

She blinked, visible shock passing across her face. It was suppressed quickly, but he didn't need the force to tell him that she was still shaken underneath. Badly shaken. "You _think_?"

"My memories are a . . . troublesome area."

"Did you kill me . . . kill her? Is that what this is really about?"

"No, I'm fairly certain I didn't kill her." He watched her closely as he spoke. Without access to the force, it felt like half the information was missing and he was fumbling blindly in the dark. "You see, I met her again fairly recently. Right after the death of the Jedi Council. She was the Dark Lord of the Sith."

The Zeltron woman's lips tightened. Then she whirled away abruptly, walking out and leaving him alone.

-s-s-

"Internal scans don't pick up any unaccounted for life-forms," Ygress warbled. The Verpine's damaged left antenna twitched intermittently as he spoke. His narrow, nimble-fingered hands traced over the softly glowing display screen, pointing out the relevant raw data. "Station records show that only three individuals entered Dreya's Bastion from docking bay six. Revan, Yuthura Ban, and their utility droid. The utility droid is currently in the station's central computer facility. Yuthura Ban and Mission Vao are currently in Kemo Dreya's offices."

Rath swore under his breath; forced himself to take a deep breath and calm down. Stress was sending splitting pain spiking through his skull. His hand came up to rub the bridge of his nose. "The skyrunner is designed to be a two man craft, but can accommodate four, at a push. Correct?"

"Correct."

"Then there was a fourth person on board." Stating the obvious, but stating the obvious was sometimes a very useful thing to do, Rath had found. The obvious had a habit of either biting you on the ass if you took it for granted, or not being quite as obvious as you thought once it was verbalised.

"The station logs show no evidence of a fourth individual." Again, Ygress pointed out the relevant section. "According to them, the only activity in bay six since Revan's arrival was Ban and Vao entering, then exiting again several minutes later. This occurred after the initial sabotage to our engines." He scrolled further down. "Neither are there any records of anyone entering docking bay three, save for Revan, Kreed and Theda."

"Then the records are wrong, aren't they?"

"Logic suggests so."

There were times when having a conversation with Ygress could be infuriating. This was definitely one of them. The Verpine had an entirely different sense of priorities and urgency to everyone else, and right now, he seemed – by his normal, twitchy, near hyperactive standards – to be in a state of perfectly unruffled calm that approached lethargy.

Rath struggled to contain his temper.

Then something near painfully obvious occurred to him. "You're hacking the station's computer systems to get this data. If you can do that, I'm betting their utility droid can do exactly the same thing."

Ygress tilted his head, mimicking a human in thoughtful pose. "Possibly. It is currently interfacing with Master Dreya's slicing cluster though, which is not connected to the stations other networks." Antennae movements hinted at slight frustration. "Otherwise, I would be able to retrieve a copy of what it is trying to slice."

"But there will be other terminals it could use nearby. And it likely hacked the system before we arrived, so it can prevent you detecting it, and hide information it wants to hide."

"More doubtful."

In someone else, Rath might have taken that to be a sign of ego – of not wanting to admit that there was someone else as, or even more, talented than themselves. The problem was, Ygress had virtually nothing in the way of ego, at least in the conventional sense. In many respects, he was almost an idiot savant, oddly childlike – albeit a child with traits that trod the borders of psychosis, and a sense of humour that occasionally strayed towards the genuinely chilling. "Explain?"

"One source slicing a system has minimal impact on a second source doing similar, unless by its actions it degrades the system being sliced. There is no sign of this. In addition, Dreya has very sophisticated security auditing. As long as I don't change anything, and restrict myself to monitoring, I escape detection. As soon as I do anything more concrete, like attempting to alter data, I trigger numerous telltales and alarms. The droid would face the same circumstance."

"So if the station records haven't been altered, then what?" A thought occurred. "If no one entered the station from bay six, or bay three from the station, then could they have got round from bay six to bay three externally?"

Ygress made a clicking noise, head waggling thoughtfully. "All external airlocks are monitored. And radiation levels outside would result in a fatal dose being received in a short period of time for any species I am aware of."

The answer was neither a yes nor a no; simply a statement of facts. Ygress liked facts, and preferred to leave them clean and unsullied by presumption.

Before Rath could follow the thought through, his comm. unit warbled. It was Ravelasch, reporting tersely that nothing untoward had been discovered on the initial sweep of the ship.

"How long until repairs are complete?" he demanded of Ygress as the conversation with Ravelasch cut off. Impatience edged his voice.

"Four to five hours. Driggs, Meitak, Tyce and Durga are assisting".

_Too bloody long_. Sitting exposed in the docking bay of a space station whose owner you'd managed to severely piss off, with a former Dark Lord of the Sith in your brig, and an unknown element running loose on your ship, for four to five hours was not a good position. That was putting it mildly. "I can give your more men."

"Five is optimal for the task. But I will take more men as is needed to expedite matters."

Rath started to say something else, but this time it was Ygress's comm. unit that interrupted. He watched the way the Verpine's antennae moved with growing apprehension. _Not good news_.

"Well?" he demanded when the conversation was over.

"Our intruder has located our stash of spares. There has been considerable damage to specific parts required to repair the main drive."

For a moment, Rath struggled not to lash out in frustration. He could scarcely believe the speed with which the situation was unravelling. When he spoke again, his voice was held together by a brittle kind of calm. "What effect does this have on repair schedules?"

"Unknown until I assess the damage first hand. We may still be able to cannibalise what we need."

"Or?" There was definitely an 'or' in there, Rath thought grimly.

"Or we may need to secure another source of spare parts."

Rath's thoughts were suddenly whirring – a tumbling, frenetic mess of activity. To be able to sabotage their drive was one thing. That just required an understanding of ship-design. To be able to locate the spares though . . .. He swore abruptly and fluently. "Turn our computer systems off. Now."

Ygress's head tilted to one side, the Verpine's expression showing no flicker of understanding. "Why would we want to do that?"

"Because our intruder has sliced into it," he explained with a grim patience he didn't remotely feel. "And right now it's likely providing them more of an advantage than us . . ."

His comm. unit warbled again. Rath stifled a groan. It was Ravelasch again. _Just when it can't get any worse . . ._

But it could get worse, and did.

The dead body of Tagalon – one of the Brothers – had just been discovered.

-s-s-

"I think you misunderstand me." Yuthura's voice held a silken quality, almost purring. Her eyes bored into Kemo Dreya's across the short distance of desktop between them. Dreya's expression was fixedly uncomfortable. "I am not making a suggestion, or asking your permission. I am informing you, out of politeness, what is going to happen."

"Lady Ban . . ." he started, placating.

She cut him off. "When myself and Tamar entered this spacestation as your guests, we agreed to abide by certain rules and standards of behaviour set out by yourself. Our understanding was that all other guests would be held to those same standards too. Clearly we were mistaken."

"I assure you that Mr. Gannaya acted entirely without my sanction." A tight smile that was halfway to being a grimace flashed briefly and was gone again. "Indeed, I have already taken steps to punish the man. He has been forbidden from returning . . ."

"That hardly corrects the matter in hand, does it?" Yuthura leant forward, every movement filled with a lithely fluid grace. Her eyes remaining fixed on his face, and she bared her sharp white teeth in an expression that couldn't remotely be mistaken for a smile.

"I would remind you that you entered into the transaction that took place of your own free will. While it might . . . distort the spirit of the rules I set out, I can hardly be expected to interfere in a voluntary business transaction between two consenting parties." She could feel his fear as he spoke, which rather undermined the reasonableness of his tone.

"Under what law does consent obtained under duress count as consent?" she enquired, trailing a sharp-nailed fingertip across the top of the desk and producing a high-pitched squeaking, scraping sound.

He started to answer, but she overrode him again. "Now, as I have already said, you are either going to do something to rectify the situation, or I am. I leave that to you."

"I am not going to allow you to provoke some kind of bloodbath, Lady Ban," he said, nearly managing to sound emphatic. Unfortunately, she thought, he wasn't entirely without a spine on some matters.

Mission sighed in ostentatious disgust. "This would go so much easier if you did that neato force lightning thing."

"Do you think so?" Yuthura asked dryly.

Mission nodded emphatically. "Yeah, I think I'd find it kind of persuasive. Or maybe you could try force choking. That looks pretty cool too. Though it does make it difficult to talk when you can't breathe, I suppose. Hey, I mean I'm not the expert here, am I?"

Yuthura smiled. "You must excuse my companion. She has a rather . . . enthusiastic outlook. Perhaps you'd like to explain to her why we don't need to resort to anything nearly so unpleasant, and that a diplomatic solution is so much . . . healthier for all of us."

Before Dreya could respond, the doors behind Yuthura and Mission beeped and slid open, Dreya's young Neimodian assistant entering, head bowed and distinctly nervous.

"What is it Parvus?" Dreya snapped. "I thought I made it clear I wasn't to be disturbed?" Despite his tone he looked relieved, the irritation merely something that was manufactured as a matter of form.

"It is . . . er." A darting sideways glance at Mission and Yuthura, before he swallowed, continuing. "Those guests you asked to be kept informed about. Their leader is on the line, wanting to talk to you urgently."

"Tell him to wait . . ." Dreya started.

"Put him through to this office," Yuthura overrode him. Her voice contained far more authority than his. "I'm sure we're all terribly interested to hear what he has to say."

The Neimodian's gaze flicked uncomfortably across to Dreya. After a pause, Dreya nodded through gritted teeth.

"Gannaya doesn't need to know we're here," Yuthura warned quietly.

A second or so later, a holographic image appeared, floating above Dreya's desk. Not having seen him before, she experienced brief surprise at the fact he bore closer resemblance to a Republic senator than the stereotype of hard-bitten merc and bounty hunter. Beside her, she felt Mission tense.

"What do you want? I thought you were supposed to be leaving?" Dreya snapped.

Rath smiled thinly. Yuthura thought there was definite strain underlying this expression though. "There was a minor accident involving my ship's drive unit. Since you're so eager to be rid of me, I thought it would be in both our interests if you were to expedite matters by providing access to the spare parts we need to most rapidly affect repairs. I would, of course, be only too happy to pay full market value, plus an inconvenience surcharge for your trouble."

Dreya snorted. "You've got some nerve."

Rath affected a nonchalant look. "If you want to look at it that way. I prefer to think of myself as practical. This way works best for both of us, I feel. The alternative leaves us stuck with each other for longer than either of us would like."

"Fine. I'll arrange for the spare parts you need." Dreya glowered.

Yuthura put a hand across Mission's to restrain the outburst she sensed brewing just beneath the surface.

"I have to say that is uncommonly civil of you, old friend. I was expecting to have to face at least a little gloating."

"The price for the parts is the release of Revan," Dreya added flatly.

Rath's expression went tight. "I'm sorry? I think I must have misheard you there, Kemo."

"You heard fine. What the two of you do after you both leave my station is none of my concern. My guests kidnapping or killing one another, on the other hand, clearly is." Dreya took a deep breath. "You made a bold play. It didn't quite come off. Suck it up and move on. If we sort things out satisfactorily, I'm willing to forget the past twenty-four hours ever happened and revoke the barring order. Anyone can have a bad day, after all."

No reply was immediately forthcoming. Then, after several heartbeats, "Ban's really got you rattled, hasn't she?"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, I can see how it goes. It's the scary Sith Master element, balanced against that undeniably oh so sexy Twi'lek factor. Very easy to leave a man off balance, I'm sure."

Dreya's gaze flicked involuntarily Yuthura's way.

Understanding flashed across Rath's face. Yuthura tensed. "Ah, she's still there with you. That explains a lot." A flash of fake, politician's smile. "My pardon, Lady Ban. I'm usually much more the gentleman, but it's been a hectic day. I think I'll call time on this conversation, if it's all the same."

The holograph disappeared abruptly.

-s-s-

"I know someone's there. I can sense your presence."

The only effect that Bastila's words had was to disturb a vaguely bat-like creature, with a wingspan getting on for two metres, from its roost. She jolted in shock as it swooped directly over her head, and then ascended rapidly through a gap in the treetops, out of sight.

"Obviously didn't want to get to know you," Canderous commented from behind her. "Can't possibly imagine why."

"More likely scared off by your ugly mug." She let her voice rise just loud enough that she knew it would carry back to him.

There was a dry answering chuckle. "I prefer to think of myself as . . . rugged looking."

"Shh!" Abruptly she held up a hand for quiet, looking round slowly, listening hard and trying to extend her senses outwards.

The bat-creature hadn't been what she'd sensed. Whoever that was, they had a very definite force presence – albeit one that was very tightly contained. Something was interfering with her ability to get any kind of directional sense on it, but they were close. Close enough to be watching them.

The Northeastern continent of Daragba – where Revan had chosen to set up his Republic base – was temperate in climate, and this particular region of it was heavily forested. Right now, it appeared to be autumn, the foliage of the trees around them turning shades of rusty orange and red, contrasting with their soaring, silver-white trunks in a manner that was truly spectacular to behold. Fallen leaves carpeted the forest floor, brilliant jewel-coloured toadstools growing up through the mulch. Every now and again, they would see objects resembling giant puffballs, more than a metre across, nestling between snaking masses of tree roots, while large iridescent beetles the size of womp rats scurried away at the sound of their approach.

The base itself was about a hundred kilometres behind them. Teams of Republic soldiers were still locked in the process of clearing out the mass of booby-traps the Sith had left behind when they'd abandoned it.

Bastila had belatedly sensed Darth Malefic's touch on the place as the dropship came in to land. It was the same disturbance to the force that she'd sensed both at Manarb and M4107 – a howling, cackling sea of madness. Here, though, there was an additional element – a strange, distorting mask that hadn't allowed her to detect the underlying disturbance until she'd gotten within a few miles of the source. Perhaps it was the same distortion that now prevented her from zeroing in on their watcher more clearly.

On landing, they'd been met by the mind burnt.

Although it had hardly come as a surprise, it had still been horrific; having to slaughter those who had once been loyal servants of the Republic, but were now nothing more than mindlessly ravening monsters – Rakghouls, but worse, since they still wore the faces of those they once were. The fighting had not gone on for long, but while it had lasted, it had been savagely intense, draining as much on a mental level as a physical one.

Once the fighting had died down and the landing area was secured, herself, Canderous and Jansa had moved out to try to track down the location shown on their map. The hope was to get there before night set in. A makeshift road – little more than a dirt track really – cut through the forest, and had gotten them to within ten kilometres of their target, before they'd been forced to abandon the armoured hovercraft they'd appropriated due to the denseness of trees and undergrowth. For the last hour or so, they'd continued forward on foot.

And for the last several minutes, they'd been watched.

Bastila didn't get the sense of any malevolence, but then again, she didn't get the sense of friendliness either. She cleared her throat. "We don't mean you any harm, whoever you are. I'm Jedi Knight Bastila Shan. I just want the chance to talk to you."

Her words echoed – overloud in her ears. The forest around them had gone preternaturally quiet.

"It's the trees, you know – or to be more accurate, the tree." The voice came from directly behind them. They whirled collectively, Canderous's massive heavy repeater up and aimed in an instant, the hilt of Bastila's dual-bladed lightsaber leaping to her grasp. "That's why you can't sense me properly. And why I can't really sense you either. Except that you're powerful. This place seems to attract the powerful of late."

"And a Mandalorian," the voice continued dryly. "You lied to me, Jedi Knight. There is never a circumstance when a Mandalorian doesn't mean harm."

The speaker was a woman. She looked to be somewhere in her early fifties, coppery red hair showing a few threads of grey. Lean to the point of gauntness, all trace of excess fat had been rendered away to leave a raw, stringy looking construction of tough sinew and peeled bone. The mottled green robe she wore was heavily patched, and a lightsaber hung openly from her belt.

She seemed to have stepped out of thin air.

Canderous snorted contemptuously as his gaze settled on her. "Think you know us well then, do you?"

"Well enough," came the response. "You kill enough of something and you can't help but get to know it – however much you might despise it."

Bastila saw Canderous looking the woman up and down appraisingly. His expression caused a rapidly expanding sinking feeling inside her chest. "Great." Canderous's words were a growl. "We can't go anywhere without tripping over some fraking nutball of an ex-Jedi."

"Who are you?" Bastila interjected hastily, trying to assert some kind of control over the situation before it degenerated entirely.

"Me dear?" The woman dragged her gaze away from Canderous. "My name is Xedra. Xedra Adath. No one of importance. Not anymore. Not ever actually, except perhaps in my long gone dreams." She stepped forward, leaves rustling softly beneath her feet. "You're a Jedi Knight you say? They must be getting younger these days. You scarcely look more than a child." She shook her head vaguely, frowning. "But not that much younger than he was, I suppose. And there was a time when I would have followed _him_ to the ends of the universe and back."

The woman's eyes were piercing; fever bright. Bastila felt distinctly uncomfortable, subjected to their stare.

"You're talking about Revan, aren't you?" Canderous stated, interrupting. "You're one of the Jedi who followed him. Disobeyed your leaders and joined the war."

"Oh, be silent," Xedra snapped. Bastila could feel the thread of force woven in with the words to give them the power of compulsion.

She turned her attention back Bastila's way. "So now the Jedi and the Mandalorians keep company." Her gaze flicked over Jansa, silent and unobtrusive in the background. "And a Republic uniform. How soon it is all forgotten."

Canderous gave another contemptuous snort, shrugging the compulsion binding him off like water from a gizka's back. "The war's over, lady. That one at least. Living out here . . ." He looked around pointedly. "I guess I can see how you might have missed it."

The woman made an exasperated noise. "Always were the most obtuse things, next to Hutts," she muttered. Then, more loudly, "The war is over, and you lost Mandalorian."

Canderous shrugged. "Win. Lose. That was never remotely the point. The point was always to test ourselves."

Something furious sparked in Xedra's eyes. "At least the Sith war with a purpose, however twisted that purpose might be. At least they are understandable. Your kind though . . ." Bastila could feel anger seething inside the woman. "Bloody butchers, the lot of you."

"We didn't come here to debate the ins and outs of the Mandalorian war." Again, Bastila tried to draw the conversation back on track.

For a long time, there was no response, Canderous and Xedra eyeballing each other – a pair of starving dogs face to face in an alleyway, neither prepared to back down. Bastila half expected to see them bare their teeth – to growl at one another.

Finally Xedra turned away from him. "No. No, you didn't at that." She smiled – moved her lips in the manner of a smile at least. "You came here to seek the nexus. The vision well. Of course you did. You're the third in the past few months. It's almost become a tourist attraction."

"The vision well?" Bastila echoed.

Xedra's face took on a strange, contemplative look. "Yes. The vision well. And whether you know it or not, that _is_ what you're looking for." The smile that wasn't a smile reappeared. The look in her eyes was cold. "I suppose we should go somewhere more conducive to conversation." A sigh, containing annoyance and other emotions that were harder to unravel. "Come then, Jedi Knight named Bastila Shan. Follow me. Bring your pet dog if you must."

-s-s-

"We're in." Ravelasch's voice crackled over the comm. unit.

"Good. Keep me posted." Rath switched the link off.

Since they weren't going to be getting anything in the way of help from Dreya, Rath had concluded that their next best option for acquiring the spares they needed was to scavenge them from the pleasure yacht they shared the docking bay with. It was called the _Ryloth Dancer_, and bore a distinctly tacky hologram on one side of it, above its name and registration number, depicting a lithely cavorting green Twi'lek dressed in a dazzling smile.

Ygress had identified it as belonging to one Veb Setanta – a spice runner with an inflated sense of his own importance, and a propensity towards acts of extreme violence. In the circumstances, Rath had absolutely no hesitation in making himself a new enemy.

Another call came through. It was Kreed. The Mandalorian didn't waste any time on preamble. "We've got our visitor cornered in the aft hold. It's a droid."

"Any difficulties?" _HK-47. Revan's personal assassin droid_. Obvious enough, with the benefit of hindsight.

"Meitak and Durga are both down. They'll live. Probably," came the terse reply.

"I'm on my way over."

"We're about to go in. We're not waiting for you."

"Fine."

Rath heard the exchange of blaster fire, followed by a pair of loud detonations when he was a corridor length away. Silence followed.

When he entered, the hold was still filled with smoke. Black scorch marks from the grenades were burnt prominently into the floor. Kreed was crouched over the fallen droid's shattered torso. One of its arms had been blown clean across the hold, while a metal leg lay nearby, similarly detached.

At the sound of Rath's approach, the Mandalorian looked round. There was a blaster burn on the metal portion of his torso, and another on his upper thigh. He held up the droid's severed head. It trailed blackened wires, one of its optic sensors completely shattered. "Got the bastard. Went down easy enough in the end."

"Not without getting a couple of shots in," Rath pointed out.

Kreed simply shrugged. "Less than scratches."

But plenty enough to cripple or even kill someone less well armoured.

So ordinary looking, to cause such trouble, Rath thought as he looked at it. But then again, that was undoubtedly the point of an assassin droid. Not much use if you saw it coming. "Give the remains to Ygress. Maybe he'll be able to make something useful out of it."

Then he turned away. A modicum of his earlier optimism started to come back.

-s-s-

"What is it now, Parvus?" Dreya snapped at the nervous looking Neimodian.

Parvus laid a datapad on Dreya's broad desk. "We've just found out . . . well, one of our relays has been deliberately destroyed. The one at the start of the Vester-Koth approach lane.

Dreya's eyes flicked rapidly from side to side, devouring the information in front of him. "When did this happen?"

"Er . . ." Parvus managed to look even more uncomfortable, if possible. "Round about nine hours ago."

"And why am only just finding this out?"

"Um, it looks like someone tried to bury the information." Parvus's face drooped. "We may have a traitor."

-s-s-

The force field dropped.

Tamar was aware of this immediately by the marked change in the ambient humming of the ship around him. He didn't react externally, continuing to lie motionless on the bunk, chest rising and falling steadily, and giving the general appearance that he remained deep in meditation.

A shadow passed over him.

Someone was standing on the threshold of the cell. The quality of the whisper soft sounds the person made told him immediately that it wasn't HK – as he'd allowed himself to briefly hope. Droids, as a rule, did not tend to breathe.

He waited for the person to say something, but nothing was forthcoming. Finally, he moved his head to look round.

It was the Zeltron woman, back again. Theda. She held a blaster pistol down at her side. As he sat up, she lifted the pistol and aimed it at the centre of his chest. "Don't."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're going to shoot me?"

Something passed across her eyes. She should have simply pulled the trigger straight off without pausing, he thought with a clinical detachment from the situation. She certainly shouldn't have let herself get drawn into speaking. But hardened merc though she was, she wasn't a killer. Not a cold-blooded one, at least.

For a Zeltron, with their acute empathic senses, that would be difficult.

Her face became like marble – closing herself off to do the deed. "We both know there's only one way this can end." Her voice was so soft that it was barely audible. "You're going to end up killing him. I can't let that happen."

He knew that she meant Rath. He stood up, movements smooth and coiled. "What if I were to promise that I won't harm him?"

"Then you'd be lying." The marble fractured briefly. "I knew he had other reasons for coming after you than those he said. But _this_ . . .." Her voice trailed off. "He's trying to prove himself, I suppose. Even though it means throwing away everything that he is. I can't stand by and watch that."

"Would he thank you for this?" His voice was quiet.

"No." Her finger tightened on the trigger, and he could see that she had made peace with her decision. "But I'm not asking him for thanks."

His muscles tensed to lunge across the space between them.

There was the sound of a blaster discharge, artificially muffled and surprisingly restrained.

-s-s-

"What have you done to my droid?"

Kreed dumped the mangled collection of parts on the worktable in front of Ygress. He recognised the warning note in the Verpine's voice; the stiffly upright posture – one thing Ygress definitely did not appreciate was having his toys abused. "Look again bug-eye. It's not one of yours. Revan's personal assassin droid. HK-47. Rath thought you might be interested. It's supposed to be pretty advanced." A shrug. "Not that it looks anything special to me."

The Verpine stepped forward, leaning over the dismembered droid parts, antennae waving, making a steady clicking noise that didn't translate into anything Kreed could understand. He suspected it was analogous to totting.

After watching him for a few moments longer, Kreed let out a breath and turned away, intent on leaving Ygress to it.

"No." The Verpine's voice stopped him before he reached the door, surprising in its emphaticness. "This is definitely my droid. I hadn't assembled it yet. See this arm? The serial number on it is one from my inventory list."

"You're sure?" But of course, Ygress was sure. The Verpine didn't deal in uncertainties.

Kreed swore venomously beneath his breath, activating his comm. "Rath, we've got a problem."

-s-s-

Tamar crouched over Theda's body, gently touching her charred hair. The blaster shot to the back of her head would have killed her instantly, the shockwaves passing through her skull turning her brain to mushy pulp. Her eyes stared at him blankly. "You had to kill her HK?"

"Statement: yes master, I did. The meatbag had a gun pointed at you. It is my duty to protect my master's life above all other considerations." A pause. "And I do so enjoy it."

He stared at the blood red assassin droid, and wasn't sure what he felt. Relief, yes, at still being alive, but . . . _I have to deactivate you, don't I? When this is over. I should have done it before now. You're never going to change, and you're always going to keep on killing whenever a loophole in your programming allows it. Like you say, you enjoy it_.

"Observation: master, you are injured."

Tamar touched the side of his head and winced. Theda had managed to get a shot off just as HK had in turn shot her. Her aim had been knocked fractionally off, and she'd missed narrowly to the left of his head. Only, apparently not quite missed. About a centimetre had been clipped off the top of his ear, and there was a raw burn along the side of his skull. Now that the flow of adrenaline had subsided, the pain began to swell.

"If the meatbag was not already dead, I would gladly kill her for you all over again."

He took a deep breath and stood up, forcing himself to concentrate on the immediate problems of the here and now. His hands came up to the collar around his neck. "I need to get this off. I think there's some kind of kind of explosive charge, probably with a radio frequency trigger."

"Indeed master. I heard you saying so earlier. I am constantly impressed that the water sacks you meatbags use as processors can produce something that resembles coherent thought." A slight pause. "Other meatbags than yourself of course, I mean. Ha, ha."

"Of course."

"I took the liberty of flooding your cell with a jamming frequency. It should be perfectly safe to remove the collar. If you would just turn around, master?"

_Should be?_ Tamar suppressed the sudden urge to protest, and a few seconds later the collar was off, in two halves in the assassin droid's hands. He moved quickly across to the ysalamari tanks, studying them carefully.

"Query: master, should we not be going now? I arranged a distraction, but it will not fool even these simpleminded meatbags for any length of time."

Tamar didn't respond. Carefully he broke the seal on one of the tanks, sliding the upper casing off. The interior was bathed in soft light. There was a tree branch of a variety he didn't recognise, kept alive by a carefully regulated flow of nutrients. Attached to it, its claws grown into the heart of the branch itself, was what could only be the ysalamari. It didn't, in all honesty, look like much.

He felt it tense as he touched it, but it was sessile and unable to move. Steeling himself, he crushed the back of its skull, wincing at the feel of it – the soft crunching sound it made. Much to the mockery of the others, he hadn't even been able to bring himself to poison the gizka infestation that had plagued the Ebon Hawk, and this turned his stomach to a degree that was entirely out of proportion.

"Take care of those two, would you HK?" He kept his voice neutral as he opened the second tank.

"With pleasure, master."

As the last ysalamari died, it was like waking up – surfacing from beneath the sea and being able to breathe again.

He could sense more of them; or rather, he could sense blank areas of the force, hemming him in from all sides. This one small island though, was free. He reached out, concentrating hard, not sure if it would work or not.

_Yuthura, I need a distraction . . ._

-s-s-

"In order to properly understand what the vision well is, you must first understand something of the history of this place, and why it was created."

Xedra had led them a few hundred metres through the forest to a ramshackle cottage built – if that was the correct term – around one of the soaring white-trunked trees. The interior was neater and more commodious than the shabby looking exterior suggested, but for all that, it was still extremely sparse and basic. The beamed ceiling was low enough that the top of Canderous's head scraped against it when he stood up, and the light filtering through the small windowpanes was distinctly dingy, leaving large areas heavily veiled by shadow.

"Or you could just get to the point without embroidering it with all this unnecessary Bantha crap."

"Be quiet," Xedra and Bastila both snapped at Canderous together.

Canderous simply chuckled, rough and rasping. His chair creaked under the strain of his armour-plated bulk.

Bastila watched Xedra's eyes narrow, the older woman's teeth grinding. There was genuine hatred there, she thought, and it hadn't lessened since their initial meeting. It had simply become more tightly wound.

Canderous – by virtue of being Canderous – was hardly helping matters. She even thought, perversely, that he was, on some levels, actually enjoying Xedra's profound dislike.

_Contrary bloody bastard_. Sometimes recently, he'd managed to resemble a normal, even reasonable and insightful human being. Others though . . .. She found it impossible to remotely understand him.

Xedra's expression smoothed over. She resumed talking, the focus of her gaze drifting to somewhere miles distant. "Many millennia before the rise of the Republic, this planet was the centre of a civilisation that spanned over a dozen star systems. Once, virtually this entire continent was a single vast city."

"That's interesting." Jansa's voice made Bastila jump slightly. The woman had been so quiet and unobtrusive up to now that she'd managed to forget she was still there. "There's no sign of that from orbit, or from the lay of the ground. Even after thousands of years you can usually spot such things if you know what to look for."

"It was destroyed in a war. This entire world and the larger Daragban civilization, come to that. Levelled to the ground. Obliterated utterly, with painstaking care and effort. " Xedra spoke in flat, brutal tones. "The only traces you'll find now lay buried deep beneath the planet's surface."

Her face twisted, sour and annoyed. "Anyway, I digress. The ruling race of this civilisation – call them Daragbans if you like – were inherently force-sensitive. They made use of the force to a degree that we would now find difficult to envisage. Even someone familiar with the Jedi enclaves in places like Coruscant, Dantooine and Ossus would be startled, I think. The force was an integral part of their system of technology, used in even the smallest facets of every day life – almost as commonplace as the way we use electricity."

It seemed a startling idea when compared to Jedi – and even Sith – teachings. "Which is why there's this strange interference in the air," Bastila murmured.

"Partially," Xedra agreed. "As I said before, it is just as much down to the tree."

"The tree?"

Bastila got the impression that, behind her eyes, Xedra's thoughts were chasing down pathways that were nothing at all to do with their current conversation. "Have you tried tracing the roots that ridge the forest floor?"

"Yeah, because our main reason for coming here was a nature ramble," Canderous muttered.

Xedra ignored him. "If you had, you would see that they all connect together – a vast network spreading across thousands of square-miles. The individual trunks, rising above the ground are not discrete plants but part of the same, single living entity. Something about it seems to attract the force to it in a way I can't explain. Sometimes I wonder if it might even be sentient somehow – the flows of force akin to brain activity."

Bastila was aware of Canderous looking at her pointedly. _We're really wasting time listening to the ramblings of a person who not only talks to trees, but thinks they understand her,_ his eyes seemed to say.

Xedra's lips pursed. "Anyway, back to what we were truly discussing. I'm sure that you're getting impatient. I know your Mandalorian friend is."

Bastila didn't say anything by way of response. For a wonder, Canderous kept his mouth shut too.

"One of the more spectacular creations of the Daragban's was a structure they carved deep into the earth, its shape designed to draw in flows of force and allow them to be shaped in such a way as to give someone standing at its bottommost point a window from which they could glimpse the future."

"This vision well you mentioned."

Her mouth twisted wryly – tacit agreement. "For a time – a few hundred years perhaps – all was well. Their civilisation flourished – peaceful and prosperous. Then the Daragban's received a glimpse of a near future that they weren't prepared for. They saw their own complete and utter annihilation, just a few years hence, in a terrible war."

For several heartbeats, silence stretched out. Finally, Xedra went on.

"As you might imagine, the Daragbans were somewhat . . . disturbed. Especially given that previous visions taken from the well had come to pass with, a few minor discrepancies aside, getting on for a hundred percent accuracy. More readings taken from the well showed the same thing, persistently and unchangingly: the entire Daragban civilisation would be wiped out in a vast war that would start in just a few years time.

"In panic, the Daragbans tried to assure themselves that the well showed only one possible future; not the unavoidable certainty of what would happen. But of course, they couldn't simply take that on faith. They decided to create a second well at a different location, in the hope that it would show a different possible future outcome."

"And it did, didn't it?" Bastila murmured. Suddenly she saw what the changes that Jansa had identified to the Drumond Kaas map had been designed to do. "It showed them exactly what they wanted to see."

"Very perceptive, Jedi Bastila." Xedra's smile was chilly – patronising. "The Daragbans built their second vision well subconsciously wanting to be deceived and reassured. In that respect, they succeeded admirably. The second well showed them arming themselves, turning their entire infrastructure into a perfectly oil machine of war, and successfully repelling the oncoming threat. It was _so_ much more palatable than the first vision, so they went along with it – despite the reservations of a few."

"But the first vision came true anyway."

The older woman snorted. "Another force sensitive race – a cruel and powerful, warlike race – was drawn to Daragba. Perhaps they sensed disturbances in the force as the Daragban's set their war machine in motion. Perhaps it was simply something that would have happened anyway." The intonation of her voice made it clear which one of those she believed.

"Normally conquerors and slavers, this race for once didn't fight to either conquer or enslave. Instead, they saw the Daragbans – an advanced force sensitive species controlling a miniature empire, churning out masses of advanced weaponry and ships – as a palpable and deadly threat to their supremacy. They fought to annihilate; a war of extinction." The look in her eyes became bleak. "They won."

"This second race. You're talking about the Rakatans." It was a cold certainty.

"The Rakatans," Xedra agreed after a barely noticeable pause. "So. I have told you about the vision well, Jedi Bastila. Now it is your turn to do some telling of your own. Why did you seek this place, and how, in the name of all the force, do you know about the Rakatans?"

-s-s-

"Rath."

There was no response. Rath Gannaya remained motionless, crouched over Theda's body, cradling her in his arms and seemingly oblivious to anything beyond her.

"Damn it, Rath! Get a hold of yourself." Kreed's voice was harsh – uncompromising.

The Mandalorian waited for several seconds, but no more of a response was forthcoming. Finally, he lost all patience. Grief for a fallen comrade was one thing, but it had to come later. The living always took first priority. He grabbed hold of Rath's shoulder roughly . . .

And Rath shrugged him off, almost casually, laying Theda carefully down and standing up again. When he looked around, his face was far too calm to be natural. "Yes, Kreed? What is it?"

_Yes, Kreed? What is it?_ The mildness of those words was even more disturbing than the calm. Kreed shoved the doubt away. As long as he held it together, the how didn't matter. "A Hutt battlecruiser just showed up out of one of the Bastion's entry lanes. Ygress reports that its arrival wasn't expected, and has caused quite a stir."

"Interesting," Rath allowed.

"It's the _Rancorous_. Which makes it slightly more than 'interesting', don't you think?"

"So somebody made a call to Seboba. Dreya's screening must be getting a little lax these days." The calmness – or perhaps blankness was a better description, Kreed thought – remained unruffled.

"Or he managed to put a tracker on us on Nar Shaddaa."

"You're never going to let Nar Shaddaa go, are you Kreed?" Rath shook his head dismissively. "And what about Revan?" The tone of his voice altered subtly, but to someone who'd known him as long as Kreed had, noticeably.

_It would have helped if you hadn't decided to power down the computer systems_. Kreed kept the thought to himself. Right now, it didn't fall under the constructive category. "Nothing yet," he said simply.

An unreadable grunt. "We don't risk anyone else's life capturing him. If he can be taken alive, then fine. If not . . . equally fine."

The briskness of the words didn't fool Kreed for a moment. Things had suddenly gotten very personal. No, he amended internally, they had always been personal. If was simply the nature of the 'personal' that had now changed.

"Well, Kreed. Get to it."

-s-s-

As the bulkhead door whispered shut at her back, Yuthura was dimly aware of Mission – with her stealth field switched on, no more than a vague, flickering ghost of an outline – moving away from her. She made herself keep her attention fixed on her own part in this, and trust the girl to take care of herself. It was difficult. She didn't like to think about Tamar's reaction to her allowing Mission to get involved in this, when the whole point had been to get her to safety.

But the alternatives had run to forcibly putting the girl into a stasis trance, and anyway, Yuthura had understood perfectly where she was coming from. _Plus I need all the help I can get_.

In front of her, the sleek bulk of the _Shadow Dancer_ was a blank-spot in the force.

There was no trace of the brief, urgent mental contact she'd had with Tamar – his voice so loud in her head that it felt rather like iron spikes being hammered through her temples. Thankfully the ysalamari force-bubble effect didn't extend far enough beyond the ship to fill the docking bay entirely, though she'd come prepared for that to be the case – wearing light, flexible black armour, and armed with blaster and grenades as well as her lightsaber.

Dreya had been 'persuaded' of the wisdom of turning a blind eye to the violation of his rules this constituted.

She edged around the bulk of the _Ryloth Dancer_, clinging to the shadows. She was aware that Mission was already halfway across the bay now, moving rapidly.

It was force sense rather than anything else that made her freeze. There, in front of her. A shadow that was moving in a manner that no light source could adequately explain. A second and a third. Defels, all around her.

As yet they hadn't spotted her, but all it would take was the one directly in front of her to turn around about 45 degrees . . .

She forced calm, slowing her heart rate and breathing to the minimum possible. Her mind reached out, skimming across their thoughts, until she reached one that was hauling a crate that was fractionally too heavy for it to handle comfortably. Its concentration was distracted by the effort it was making, and it was relatively easy for her to implant the suggestion that it had heard something across the other side of the bay.

"Wait, over there . . ."

As soon as the others were explicitly listening for something, it became possibly to make them hear what she wanted them to. A second or so later, they were moving swiftly away from her in disciplined formation, one of them calling in over its comm.

Yuthura let out the breath she'd been holding and darted towards the _Shadow Dancer_.

About three-quarters of the way there, the ship's rear exit ramp began to lower. She ducked into the cover of one of the landing gear housings . . . and felt all connection to the force cut off abruptly.

Everything degenerated into chaos.

Part of it was perceptual. The sudden deadening of her senses, combined with a disorienting sense of vulnerability verging on agoraphobia, made it seem like the entire landing bay had altered abruptly around her.

Most of it, however, was real.

The sound of blaster fire came from inside the _Shadow Dancer_ – lengthy and strident bursts of it. She heard one the Defels shout a warning to the others. Across the landing bay, Mission had obviously reached her target. There was a loud explosion accompanied by a brilliant incendiary flash. Fire alarms went off cacophonously, the air clouding with freezing white mist as automated carbon dioxide extinguishers activated.

Monitoring from outside, T3 took his cue, the main bulkhead door sliding open and everything except the dim red emergency lighting going out, plunging the docking bay into near-darkness. Loud random noises were piped in over the intercom system, mingling with the fire alarms in a truly appalling racket.

Quickly Yuthura rolled a grenade underneath the ship's bow. The explosion was not meant to do damage, but simply to add to the sound and fury – and hopefully prevent any of Gannaya's mercs realising they were facing a grand total of two Twi'leks.

She peeled away from the landing gear, back outside the range of the force bubble. Reaching out, she grabbed hold of every loose object she could find – toolboxes, refuelling pipes, metal gratings and oilcans; any other assorted junk that wasn't tied down – snatching them up with her will and sending them flying randomly threw the air like the work of a dozen competing poltergeists.

More blaster shots rang out, the Defels spooked into making their own contribution to the chaos.

One shot, whether by accident or design, passed within centimetres of her head.

Immediately Yuthura snapped on her lightsaber, its violet blade incandescent in the gloom. Continuing to direct the flying objects in their swirling flight, she sent out waves of confusion and fear through the force, easily deflecting the half-hearted and erratic blaster shots she drew.

HK and Tamar had made it to the bottom of the ramp. Another explosion rang out, Mission further adding to the distraction. Yuthura cut down a Defel that tried to rush at her with a vibroblade, separating it from shoulder through to hip. A second was shot in the back as it came at her.

There was another explosion. She could taste smoke, acrid in the back of her throat. Then she could feel Tamar outside of the force bubble, all grim concentration and flowing adrenaline.

"Catch." She took his lightsaber from her belt, tossing it back approximately in his direction, relying on him to draw it in.

A fraction later, she heard the snap-hiss of it igniting.

And about thirty seconds after that they were clear, the bulkhead doors shutting with a pneumatic hiss at there backs, cutting off another volley of blaster shots. Mission phased back into vision as her stealth unit switched off, grinning from ear to ear.

Then Tamar stopped abruptly, leaning against the wall, breath coming short and fast. Now that the adrenaline rush was fading slightly, she could sense that he was in was in considerable pain, having taken at least a couple blaster shots during the escape. Ahead of them, superficially at least, HK was in far worse state, extensive areas of the assassin droid's casing charred black.

Yuthura felt Tamar start to channel force, soothing pain and repairing tissue damage. She started to move to his side, intent on helping, but Mission beat her to it.

"Damn it, you lunking great nerf-herder, what do you think you're playing at?" The Twi'lek girl jabbed a finger accusingly at his chest.

"Nice to see you too, Mission." He smiled at her warmly once he'd recovered slightly. "And thanks for the rescue."

Mission exhaled softly, then, after a moment's pause, hurled herself into his arms, hugging fiercely as if she was trying to reassure herself she wasn't just imagining this. After a moment, Tamar embraced her back.

Standing back from them, Yuthura watched silently, trying to sort out what she felt. Relief yes, and in some measure, elation, but also for reasons she couldn't pinpoint, a lingering sadness that almost amounted to a sense of loss.

Her eyes met with Tamar's over Mission's shoulder.

He indicated that she should come over and join them with a shift of his eyes, but she refused with small shake of her head – a fleeting smile.

-s-s-

"Wait a minute. Revan _is_ alive?" Xedra's tone was sharp as she interrupted Bastila. She looked stunned – a mixture of fear and a whole multitude of other emotions showing nakedly through to the surface. Her hands shook, having to grip the arms of her chair tightly to steady themselves.

Canderous snorted contemptuously. "You've been living within a hundred kilometres of the largest Republic base in the sector, and you haven't managed to pick that one small fact up? That's . . . impressive."

"I wasn't speaking to you, Mandalorian." She glared daggers. "Another word, and I will shove my lightsaber so far up your rear you'll be able to see the glow shining out of your ears."

Her gaze snapped back round, and Bastila could see that she was struggling not to hyperventilate. Even over the interference from the trees, she could clearly sense Xedra's profound agitation. "Tell me. Tell me now." Her voice was raw.

Bastila went over the story as quickly as she could, her voice stumbling several times, both at the near frightening intensity of Xedra's scrutiny, and the constant expectation that Canderous would butt in and contradict her, or otherwise do something to deliberately provoke the woman's wrath. For a wonder though, he kept quiet.

"Those damned bastards," Xedra muttered when she'd finished. Her gaze was miles away. The lines of her face looked deep and harsh.

"I'm sorry?"

"The Council. Who do you think I mean?" A harsh laugh. "Still, they got their comeuppance in the end, didn't they?"

The sheer, bitter venom in the woman's words left Bastila briefly too surprised to speak.

"Do I shock you, girl? I do, don't I? How could I even think such things about the _wise_ Master Vandar and company?" Her glower was dark – almost baleful. "Cowards the lot of them, so paralysed by fear and doubt that they were willing to let billions die at the Mandalorians' hands for the sake of a vague premonition. Not willing to admit they were wrong and help us, even when the decision had been removed from their fumbling and indecisive hands."

Bastila's protest was automatically ingrained. "They saw what would happen afterwards – the darkness that would come. If Revan and Malak had trusted . . ."

"Enough!" Xedra's breathing came raggedly – a grating saw. Bastila struggled not to flinch back from her, genuinely frightened by what she saw in her face. "What happened afterwards was _not_ an inevitable consequence of what came before. Our joining the war against the Mandalorians and their fall were entirely separate events. There was no fate. No destiny. The darkness that the Council foresaw came about as much from their inaction as for any other reason."

"The Jedi wouldn't have abandoned the Republic. When the time was right they . . ."

"When the time was right?" Xedra sounded incredulous. "I don't know what they told you, Jedi Bastila, but the Republic wasn't years away from defeat. It wasn't even months. It was a matter of weeks." Her gaze flicked to Canderous. "Tell her Mandalorian. You know."

For a moment, Bastila thought he was going to snap at her and refuse, but he didn't.

Instead, he sucked in air between his teeth, making a low whistling noise. "She's right, more or less. At the point Revan joined the war, the Mandalore was ready to make his decapitating stroke. A major attack that was just a feint, to draw the larger potion of the Republic fleet into protecting Palastre – a key strategic point on the Perlemian trade route – while we made unopposed lighting strikes deep into the heart of Republic territory, taking out the shipyards at Kuat, Isodor and Bilbringi. It would have removed the Republic's one absolutely critical advantage over us – its ability to produce ships in greater quantities and at a far faster rate than we ever could – in a single stroke.

"If that had come off, the Jedi might still have been able to reinforce the Republic enough to keep us out of the deep core, but they would have lost the ability to turn us out of the territory we'd already gained. The map of the galaxy would have been permanently redrawn." The look in his eyes was distant – strangely regretful.

"Except of course, the Republic didn't buy the feint. They sacrificed Palastre, in a way that startled us. It wasn't something they would have even considered before, and consequently they managed to turn our strike forces back with ease. We knew right then there'd been a seismic change – that for the first time we were truly in a war. After that, Revan got his command over a third of the fleet, and the rest, as they say, is history." Canderous's expression was impenetrable.

"Of course, you might want to take that with a large shovelful of salt. All us defeated soldiers have their 'what if' stories." A shrug. "Your choice."

"So do you have anything else to say, girl?" Xedra pressed.

Bastila struggled to find the correct words – anything to calm the anger she sensed in the woman. This wasn't something she wanted to argue about. "The past is past. We all made mistakes, and they cannot be undone now, however much we regret what's happened. All of us have to take things as they are and move on from it."

Xedra made a contemptuous noise. "You spout enough inane platitudes to be a Master, girl. Do you truly, believe a word of what you say?"

A lengthy pause, the look in her eyes becoming distant again. "I watched the two of them – two of the finest people I have known – slowly consumed by what they had to become for the Republic's sake. And I will never forgive _them_ for standing aside and letting that happen, just to prove their point. Not ever."

_And personal responsibility counts for nothing?_ Bastila got the sense that nothing she could say would do anything other than inflame matters – that on this, Xedra's mind was fixed beyond changing. At least in any way she could manage.

Silence dragged.

Surprisingly, it was Jansa who broke it. "So why didn't you follow them right to the end, if that is how you feel? Why turn away from them and remain here?"

It took Xedra a long time to respond.

"I don't hold myself better or stronger than they were, if that's what you mean." A weighty pause. "If a friend does something you regard as folly, is it friendship to follow them in that folly, even so? But no. That sounds vaguely noble of me. The truth was, I was tired. Tired and scared, and with no will left for what their path led to." She sighed. "I loved him – not that way, but a kind of love all the same – but towards the end I think I hated him too, and I had had enough."

Curiosity was a burning itch. After a hesitation, Bastila asked tentatively, "What were they after? Revan and Malak I mean. Why did they . . .?"

"Become Sith?" Xedra raised an eyebrow. "It wasn't as simple as that. I think their intentions were still good, but they were different people by that stage. They couldn't not be. Ironic really, but in the end I think a large part of it came down to him searching for the darkness the Jedi Council claimed to have foreseen. He didn't simply disregard the danger. Quite the opposite, in fact. He almost became obsessed by it – proving the Council wrong. So he set out to find and know their coming darkness, and then defeat it before it could undo what we had all given so much to achieve." The volume of her words dropped, becoming barely audible. "And that led him here, to the wells that imparted visions of the future."

"And what did the well show him?"

Xedra looked at her for so long that Bastila didn't think any answer was going to be forthcoming. She started to grow increasingly uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

"I don't know. I'd already left them by that time."

The answer surprised Bastila. She'd assumed their parting of ways would have occurred afterwards, as a result of what was shown.

A bitter smile combined out of self-mocking and self-loathing. "It was fear." She exhaled heavily. "Fear of knowing what the future held." Her blunt fingertips traced idle patterns on the arms of her chair. "To my mind there is no worse kind of damnation than that. The Daragban's saw the future. The Jedi saw it too, before the wars with Exar Kun, and then again with the Mandalorian war. Each time, in trying to avoid that future, they acted in _exactly_ such a way as to bring about what they had foreseen. To know your future is to know your doom, and I wasn't prepared to know that. Revan, of course, saw it differently. _There is no ignorance, there is knowledge_."

"Yet you've stayed here, all this time," Bastila murmured.

"Yet I stayed here," Xedra agreed.

Her gaze frosted over again – sharp and watchful. "So Jedi Bastila, you managed to find the map we altered on Drumond Kaas – force-forsaken hellhole that it is. Are you simply following the one who came here recently? The red knight. The hollow man, with his crown of misery and madness."

"Darth Malefic."

"I do not care what he calls himself. I did not care for him at all, so I remained hidden from his sight. You were close to catching him. Less than three days, you missed him by."

"We need to find him. To stop him. He seeks to follow the same path that Revan took."

"Then he's out of luck." Xedra sneered. "He went to the wrong well – the one that lies and shows you not the future, but what you want to see. Who knows what phantom it has him chasing? Who cares? You've done your job, Jedi Bastila. Leave this Sith to whatever doom awaits him."

Bastila shook her head. "No, I can't do that. Even if what he saw was a lie, it could still lead to great harm."

"You said we were the third visitors in the past few months," Canderous interrupted. "That implies there was someone else, apart from Malefic. Who?"

Xedra stopped and looked at him again. Bastila steeled herself for another outburst, but none was forthcoming. "A woman, all in black. Four months back. The first person to come seeking the well in all the years I have been here."

"Another Sith?" Bastila was thinking about the 'true Sith Lord' Derren Horvath had boasted about serving.

"If wearing black is enough to label you a Sith, then maybe. She did not seem to be a Jedi, for all the fact that she carried a lightsaber. Her mind was disciplined, and with the trees, it was impossible to get any kind of true sense of her. Powerful, like you are, though." A grimace. "I was curious about her, I admit, so I followed. She didn't see me, I don't think."

"And what did you see?"

"I saw her descend into the false well. And there she did something with the force. I couldn't tell what, except that she wasn't using the well for its intended purpose. She spent no more than fifteen minutes down there in all, before she left." Xedra's tone became musing. "Perhaps she altered something. Perhaps this Darth Malefic of yours saw what _she_ wanted him to see, do you think?"

Bastila wasn't entirely sure what to make of that. Everything seemed to be getting more and more complicated, when she'd hoped that coming here would lead to some kind of resolution. "I need to go to the well," she said finally. "I need to use it."

"After all I have told you of it? Are you stupid, girl?"

Bastila's expression didn't alter. "I'm doing what I have to do. If what you say is right, and this woman did alter the well in someway, then perhaps it will show me the same thing that it showed Malefic. And if not – what I know to be lies cannot hurt me."

"You're sure about that, are you?"

To tell the truth she wasn't sure about it at all. "You could come with us, if you are worried. Perhaps your wisdom might help me."

A snort.

"What other reason did you have of revealing yourself to us?" Bastila persisted. "You could have simply ignored us, like you did with Darth Malefic."

Xedra didn't say anything.

"Surely you've spent long enough out here, alone, whatever your reasons? There comes a time when you have to stop looking to the past and move beyond it."

"And what could you possibly know about that, girl?"

"More than you might think, perhaps." Bastila voice was soft. Then. "You could see Revan again perhaps. I think that he would welcome the chance to talk to you."

A shudder passed through her. The temptation there was plain. "And see what kind of mockery the Jedi Council has made him into? No. No." She shook her head emphatically, though Bastila sensed more turmoil underneath. "No, I don't think I could bear that. Not now."

She stood up, looking old and drained. "Still, I won't stand in the way of you doing what you think you must, Jedi Bastila. Chase your Darth Malefic, if you think it so important. I'll even give you some information that might prove . . . useful. A warning, if you like."

"Oh?"

"Your red wrapped Sith left something behind when he departed from here." She sounded amused, in a fatalistic kind of way. "A creature, it was. So large that it had to be airlifted into place inside a gigantic cage." She wandered over to the sink, in front of the window, and there picked up a half-drained glass of water. "A terrible thing, possessed of a ferociousness and rage far beyond that of any natural predator. Already it has turned the woodland around the well into a no go area, the local wildlife completely devastated. Soon it will have to start wandering further field in search of prey, though it appears to kill for other reasons than simply to eat. Soon it will find its way here."

"A terentatek," Canderous stood up too. He seemed almost eager, a definite gleam in his eye.

"A terentatek," Xedra agreed with a nod. "The biggest I have ever heard of."

-s-s-

Jolee guided the gunship smoothly into the neutral gravity zone surrounding Dreya's Bastion. "I don't suppose you've had any thoughts about how we're going to deal with this thing, have you?" he asked almost airily, nodding at the view screen as he spoke. "Because, although undoubtedly a fine vessel, I'm thinking we're just slightly overmatched."

The view screen showed the Hutt battlecruiser hanging dead centre, considerably magnified. Its massive, bloatedly ugly bulk loomed over the space station, for all the galaxy like a drunken bully about to kick down an ornate sandcastle.

Juhani remained quiet, not having come up a good answer to that, despite spending getting on for ten hours attempting to find a solution. Hoping to take them by surprise and get in a lucky hit did not really count as a tactic.

"Ah, well. I was just wondering." In the pilot's seat, Jolee shrugged, before continuing. "Because, personally, I haven't been able to come up with the slightest idea either." He paused, ruminating. "Well, apart from the obvious blaze of glory type scenario. But to be honest, I'm thinking that a blaze of glory – for all its undoubted upsides – is not going to do my joints much good."

As he finished speaking, the Hutt battle cruiser opened fire.

A concentrated turbolaser volley, utterly silent in the void, completely obliterated docking bay six.


	11. Big Game Hunting

**11. Big Game Hunting**

"How's she doing?"

The Sullustan, Witnik Nayn, looked up at Carth's approach. His mouse-like ears twitched, the heavy, overlapping jowls of his face making it difficult for a human to tell much from his expression.

"Sleeping," he said finally. "Which, from the look of it, is exactly what you should be doing."

"I'm fine." As he said it, Carth struggled to stifle a yawn, which undermined his position just slightly. His body felt – for all the kolto treatment it had undergone – as if he'd just endured an hour-long sparring session with Canderous, his limbs so stiff and heavy they seemed to have lead weights attached.

"You haven't gotten any better at lying over the years, have you Carth?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"But still a master at the uptight defensiveness. It's kind of reassuring in a way. No matter what changes around you, some things always stay the same." Witnik turned back to what he was doing – fairly typically, tinkering with something mechanical, seeking to extract an extra few percentage points of performance or efficiency.

"I think I resent that."

There was a high warbling noise that constituted Sullustan laughter. "If you can't handle the truth . . ."

Carth knew Witnik from the Mandalorian war, where the Sullustan had served as a fleet mechanic in the same battlegroup as him. When he'd been posted to Berchest at the war's end, Witnik had been one of the few people there he'd served with previously. They'd ended up spending many long and lazy afternoons whiling away the time playing cards and talking about this and that.

Until a few days ago, he hadn't seen Witnik in years. But, badly wounded as he was, with all his intelligence contacts blown, and the strong probability that the Sith were still looking for him, the Sullustan had been just about the only thing that had come to mind as any kind of option. He'd ended up rolling up on Witnik's doorstep in the early hours of the morning, staggering under the weight of Yolanda's comatose form, and there collapsing.

Witnik had seemed remarkably unsurprised to see Carth, but that was fairly typical of his nature – whatever happened, good or bad, was greeted with an accepting shrug. When he'd found out what was going on – the small fraction of it that Carth had let slip, anyway – he'd insisted upon helping them get off Berchest. Carth hadn't protested as much as he perhaps should have. The Sullustan owned a modified light freighter – of a sort that, Carth couldn't help but notice, was ideally suited to smuggling work – on which they were now travelling.

Where they were travelling, aside from away from Berchest, was a more open question.

A search of the holo-net had rapidly told him that his preferred option – a rendezvous with the _Long and Winding Way_, and Tamar and Jolee – was now out of the question. The spike of fear that had caused had lasted until he'd managed to find detailed official records of events, which strongly suggested that Jolee at the least had survived.

And if Jolee had survived, it was impossible to imagine that Tamar had not. Irrational though that was.

The back-up plan consisted of waiting until Yolanda regained consciousness and this time not taking no for an answer when he asked his questions. Or it had been, until a few minutes ago.

Witnik's chosen phrasing finally registered. "Sleeping rather than unconscious?"

Witnik looked up at him again. "She regained consciousness briefly about an hour ago. Went to sleep almost immediately. Best thing for her, if the sickbay monitors are anything to go by." His dark, beady looking eyes fixed Carth intently. "What happened to her anyway? You never did say. It looks almost like . . . well, like the life's been sucked right out of her."

"Pretty much," Carth muttered beneath his breath. He pictured bright baleful orange energy, zigzagging between her chest and the Catcher's hand. Then, "And you didn't think that was important enough to tell me?"

Witnik made a rude sounding noise. "I _am_ telling you. Now. You were asleep too, and besides, she's not in any condition for you to be breaking out the electrodes and the vibro-blades just yet."

Carth grunted noncommittally.

"I did that DNA test, like you asked," Witnik added, almost offhand.

"Oh?"

"Always hit and miss in this day and age, with all the migration and intermingling you humans get up to. Highest probability from the profile is that she's from Emberlene. If that's any use to you."

Carth made a noncommittal sound. What he knew about Emberlene was strictly bare bones stuff: a matriarchal society, extremely authoritarian, with a strong warrior tradition. It had kept itself largely isolated and neutral throughout all of the recent galactic troubles, although there were stories of small groups of exclusively female warriors from there hiring themselves out as bodyguards, mercenaries and even assassins over the past few years. To those in the know, they'd acquired a reputation for extreme skill, efficiency and deadliness – useful if you wanted a slightly more circumspect weapon than an Iridorian or a Mandalorian.

So it was, Carth thought, just possible she actually was Jerstyl Daxar's PA – albeit an extremely talented and specialised one. Of course, every other possibility remained open too.

"Any luck with the box?" He was referring to the combination-locked container he'd seen Yolanda trading for in the Berchest nightclub, before the mercenaries she'd been dealing with had double-crossed her.

"Yes."

"Oh?"

"And all of it's bad." Carth thought Witnik looked embarrassed from the way his ears drooped. "The security on it is a sight more complex than I can deal with. Anyone tampers with it, or gets the combination wrong more times than the trigger limit allows, and . . ." A hand gesture indicating an explosion. "Bang. Whatever's inside gets atomised."

Carth grimaced. It figured.

"Another thing to ask her." He blinked, then amended quickly after seeing the look on Carth's face, "Later on."

"Except for the fact she almost certainly doesn't know the combination," Carth muttered, primarily to himself.

"Hmm?"

"I saw her trading for the box," he explained. "The trade went bad, and a gunfight broke out. She snatched it. I very much doubt the mercs she was trading with were stupid enough to tell her the combination in advance."

"Ah well." Witnik scratched at one jowly cheek. "There are people who make cracking this kind of thing a speciality. Just because I can't do it, doesn't mean that someone else can't. I know some names if it helps."

Carth nodded distractedly. None of this, he reminded himself, was what he'd come to talk to the Sullustan about. The dark, ominous sense left over from his dreams came back – heavy and cloying. "What's the nearest safe, Republic-allied world to us? Preferably one with a large spaceport on a number of connecting trade routes."

Witnik's ears tilted inquisitively. "Something come up?"

Carth didn't immediately respond. The only answer he had was the sort of answer that looked, well . . . not entirely sane. "I think someone's looking for us," he said simply. "You've already done more than I could ever have asked you to. I don't want you getting dragged in any further than you are."

"Phfft." Witnik waved him away. "Don't be stupid. Do you know what I've been doing these last few years? Repairing protocol droids and doing short freight runs round the Colonies, as and when. Not exciting, Carth. Really. Much as I never thought I'd say it, I've almost come to miss the fleet. And I _really_ hated the fleet."

"The last person who I involved in this died." Guilt still haunted him whenever his thoughts strayed to Bliss. It rose up again now, and he struggled unsuccessfully to push it away. "So, answer the damn question." It came out sounding harsher than he'd intended.

Witnik shrugged. "Berchest was a safe, Republic-allied world, with a large spaceport on a number of connecting trade routes."

"One without the hordes of Sith agents would be fine."

Witnik shook his head. "It's not good, Carth."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"People are starting to look to their own safety, and they see the Republic Senate – and especially the Jedi – as being out of touch, indecisive and unable to adequately protect them. They're looking to form new alliances and position themselves more neutrally. Hoping that any reignition of conflict will pass them by, I'd guess. I think you'll find a lot of places like Berchest now – still nominally part of the Republic, but in reality . . . not."

"This is bloody ridiculous. Didn't we just win this damned war?"

The look he got back was calm and unflinching. "No Carth, you didn't win this damned war. You helped prevent the Republic getting its ass kicked – imposed a stalemate where neither side was strong enough to defeat the other in open war. You gained us all a bit of a respite, but I'm thinking that's running out now." His ears drooped. "There's not many places are going to be safe for you right now, and I'm thinking from what you say about Coruscant, nowhere at all is out of bounds for the Sith."

Carth's jaw clenched, but he just nodded. _Why do we bother? If it never gets any better, what's the point? _Another dark thought to be shoved unceremoniously away to gibber quietly in the dark corners.

"So what's got you spooked? Better out than in, as my Uncle Neknor used to say. Of course, he always did talk a load of garbage . . ." Witnik trailed off, but his gaze remained fixed to Carth, containing the kind of quietly determined look that said he wasn't about to let it drop.

Carth looked away. The dream had left him lying in a cold sweat, his breath coming fast and shallow. "I told you about the Dark Jedi we ran up against." His voice was neutral – emotionless.

"The one you sent for a swim?"

"He survived."

It had been almost identical to the dream he'd first had on Berchest, before the Catcher came after him. The dark, shadowy figure, stalking him remorselessly, impossible to evade. Looking for him. Looking straight at him with eyes that burned and saw clearly across the vast distances of intervening space.

Witnik tilted his head to one side. "And how can you know that, hmm? Last thing you were convinced he was dead. You're sure paranoia isn't getting the better of you? You don't have to be inventing enemies."

"I _know_," Carth's insisted with grim fatalism, "Because I can feel him looking for me."

-s-s-

Juhani gripped the arms of the flight-seat tightly, her claws leaving marks in the synth-leather. She felt her stomach lurch under the gunship's artificial gravity as Jolee sent them through another tight loop. A fraction later, a violent shudder passed through the hull as incoming blaster fire splashed and deflected away off their shields.

In front of them, the scarred side of the Hutt battlecruiser loomed like an enormous plasteel cliff face, details – gun blisters, sensor clusters, viewports – getting larger and more defined with a rapidity that was terrifying. As it began to seem like a collision – with accompanying crashing, fiery death – was inevitable, Jolee yanked back hard on the controls.

Abruptly Juhani was squashed down so hard into her seat it felt like she was being ground beneath a giant's thumb. She couldn't move so much as a muscle, her face pulled back tight against her skull and her teeth bared in a rictus grimace. The _Rancorous_'s hull loomed so close in front of them that she could see the fine texture of metalwork down to individual scratches and micro-craters. As the pressure grinding down on her became even more intense, her vision started to go first red, than black around the edges, contracting down to a narrow tunnel. A cry of panic rose in her chest but stuck fast in her throat . . .

Then they were flying level again, the pressure gone so abruptly it left her head spinning. The side of the battlecruiser whizzed past beneath, grey metal plain rather than cliff face now.

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

Whoever had come up without one had obviously never spent time on a ship piloted by Jolee Bindo. Her breath came raggedly, heart thudding. The officer occupying the sensor position was slumped forward, having blacked out under the g-forces they'd been pulling. As she watched, he twitched and spasmed a couple of times, before coughing and jerking back to consciousness.

More violent shudders passed through the gunship's superstructure at near misses from the _Rancorous's_ gun turrets. Jolee sent them lurching through another series of stomach churning evasive manoeuvres, answering with strafing bursts of turbolaser fire that were scarcely more than gnat-bites against the giant Hutt ship.

As she struggled not to be violently ill from the rapid shifts of acceleration and momentum, Juhani began to feel distinctly nostalgic for Carth's piloting skills. He managed to bring a certain finesse to manoeuvres, instead of leaving you with the sense that you were riding bareback on an out of control Reek, clinging on for dear life.

Earlier, they'd rapidly reached the conclusion that trying to take the _Rancorous_ on at range was tantamount to suicide, inevitably resulting in them either being picked off by turbolasers or overwhelmed by fighters. Most of the Hutt ship's firepower was located at its front end, so instead Jolee had tried to bring them in close alongside the vessel, where the relatively light gun density would at least give them a theoretical chance of survival.

It had worked up to a point. That point being, they were still alive.

Behind them, a Hutt fighter exploded in a silent flash of vapour, shot down by one of their rear gunners. More blaster fire stabbed at them, warning lights and alarms going off in addition to the violent jolt that threw Juhani forward in her seat and blasted most of the breath from her lungs. Dimly she heard Jolee swearing to himself as he wrestled with the controls.

The chances of them taking the battlecruiser out in combat were so miniscule as to approach zero. Therefore, they'd all agreed that their best bet was to try to fight their way through to one of the _Rancorous'_s landing bays and usurp control from the inside out.

It was all alarmingly reminiscent of the escape from the Leviathan. Except this time, insanely, they were attempting to do it in reverse. At what point it had even remotely resembled a sensible idea, Juhani couldn't say for sure. It certainly didn't now.

Another judder passed through them, and for a moment – as the gunship veered sideways – it looked alarming like they were going to slam straight into the _Rancorous's_ side.

Jolee brought them under control again, seemingly at the last possible instant, but they were going too fast and overshot the landing bay they'd been aiming at. That led to another nigh on suicidal manoeuvre, Jolee sending their ship through a rapid 270-degree turn that threw Juhani sideways so hard it left her dazed and bruised, despite her restraints.

The shields covering the entrance to the landing bay were still up. They were heading straight for them with no room to turn aside.

Juhani's eyes grew briefly wide as saucers, but a controlled burst from their front-facing ion guns made them fizzle for just long enough, and they were through. Suddenly they were in atmosphere, still flying much too fast, rows of brilliant landing lights strobing rapidly past.

Her heart had just about started to subside back down from her throat when they hit the deck. The impact was tremendous, bouncing her into the air before her restraints slammed her forcefully back down into her seat. The shriek of rending metal rose to overwhelming, eardrum shattering pitch, sheets of incandescent sparks flying up past the bridge windows. As they slid, the gunship started pirouetting round with all the grace of a tauntaun trying to roller-skate on an ice sheet, the deck tilting slowly sideways beneath them until the angle became so acute that they were in danger of toppling onto their side.

A series of thudding impacts vibrated through the gunship, punctuating the shrieking wail as they careened through a rank of fighters, clipping off wings and nose cones and sending maintenance droids scurrying for cover. There was a loud explosion and another tremendous jolt as they smashed into a refuelling rig and straight on through.

As the wall of greasy black smoke cleared in front of them, the rear of the landing bay loomed into view, approaching fast.

They weren't decelerating quickly enough.

Sparks continued to fly, the blaring of alarms all but drowned out by the incessant scream of metal on metal. There was no way they could possibly stop in time. Juhani flinched away reflexively, her head twisting to one side as she grabbed her seat's arms once again in a death grip . . .

She must have blacked out briefly.

When she came to again, there was harsh ringing noise in her ears and a splitting pain pulsing through her skull with every heartbeat. The air tasted acrid. It tickled the back of her throat, making her cough violently and exacerbating the heavy, bruised pain in her chest. Her restraints were cutting into her so tightly that they were in danger of cutting off circulation.

After a moment, the ringing resolved into the sound of external alarms rather than generic white noise accompanying the sound of blood rushing in her ears. The blurred, hazy quality of the air didn't fade and she belatedly realised there was a small electrical fire burning nearby, inside a shattered control console.

One of the other crewmembers groaned loudly. Juhani gritted her teeth and forced herself to move, hands weak and unsteady as she unfastened her restraints.

Jolee was already up and in the process of dusting himself down. He glanced back at her. "Perfect landing, wouldn't you say?"

-s-s-

"Xedra wasn't exaggerating," Canderous said quietly. He sat back on his haunches on the forest floor. Beside him in the damp earth, there was a footprint. A very large footprint. "A third again as big as the one on Korriban. Even bigger than that, maybe."

Bastila peered over his shoulder. She was distinctly on edge, a jittery, skittish feeling she couldn't suppress leaving her wanting to bolt – to get away from this spot right now.

In part, it came from the atmosphere in the forest around her. It was too quiet, no sign of any of the abundant life that had been in evidence even a few kilometres back. The stillness was eerie, and perhaps it was just perception, but even the insects seemed to have vanished.

Another part of it came from Jansa, who stood off to one side, radiating nervousness. Her gaze kept darting round near-frantically, and every slight sound or hint of movement had her jolting sharply. That nervousness was contagious.

She swallowed – forced herself to concentrate. "It's two days old. At least."

"Nearer three." Canderous didn't look round at her, but she thought he sounded grudgingly impressed.

"I wasn't born a Jedi, you know. My father was a treasure hunter. He taught me how to read tracks, and a few other useful skills besides." She wasn't sure why she bothered to give an explanation, especially one as relatively personal as that. Her jaw shut tight on the words as soon as they were out.

"They took you early, didn't they?" he said quietly after a pause. "The Jedi."

She frowned, searching for a hidden barb in his words but finding none. "When I was eight."

He made a soft noise that might have been a stifled laugh. "They take Mandalorian boys for war training at eight. We're assigned to war parties and start fighting by the time we're thirteen. So maybe we do have a little in common after all."

Not so long ago such a suggestion would have at the least brought an angry denial. Now . . . she wasn't sure what now was, but things had certainly changed. For one thing, she realised she no longer felt uncomfortable round the Mandalorian. "Both of us object warnings on the dangers of missing out on a proper childhood."

"Yeah, something like that," he agreed quietly.

He stood up, moving across to a silver-white tree trunk, which bore a series of deep and vicious looking gouges. The dark orange sap that had leaked from the wounds had hardened almost solid.

"What are you trying to get at," she asked after a moment's silence. He never just said something. There was always an underlying barb or point.

The shrug of his massive, armoured shoulders was almost like a seismic shifting. "I'd heard of this strange Republic tradition. 'Conversation', I think it's called. Thought I might give it a try."

Bastila's lips pursed. She wondered if she was being mocked. "And you want to have this conversation while we're out hunting terentateks?"

"Terentatek singular will do for me." Another hefty shrug. "Besides, it's not within a couple of kilometres of us right now."

"You're sure on that, are you?"

"And you're not, Jedi?" he countered. "Look around. There're no fresh spoors, and besides, something that's as big as a full-grown rancor is going to struggle ever so slightly sneaking up on us in these woods."

Bastila wasn't quite that confidant. The one they'd encountered on Kashyyyk had come upon them with a speed and relative quiet that had been terrifying, looming out of the gloom of the shadowlands. She got no sense of it anywhere close by through the force, but that could just have been down to interference from the trees. It was difficult to think of the trees as a singular entity, despite what Xedra had said.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked eventually.

A hand came up to rub his jaw. "Always wanted to test myself against a terentatek. Properly I mean. Not just as Revan's bagman. Seems as good a way to go as any, if it comes to that. A worthy opponent, I'm thinking."

"That isn't what I meant." Her voice held a hint of exasperation. _Why are you here, fighting on behalf of a people you went to war with? You can't explain it off as loyalty Revan anymore._

Canderous grunted. "I _know_ that. Give me just a little credit, Princess. And try learning what a hint sounds like."

"Because you're the expert at taking hints."

"When I ignore hints I do it deliberately. Not because I'm blind to them." She thought that, beneath the surface, he was uncomfortable though. That he didn't answer because he didn't fully know what the answer was.

He changed the subject, walking forward again. "You ever faced a terentatek before?"

"On Kashyyyk." She fell into step beside him, lightsaber to hand. Behind them, Jansa hurried to keep up.

"Tamar use the minefield tactic there too?"

Bastila nodded. "We baited it with a Kinrath carcass. Unfortunately, we underestimated the amount of mines we needed. It charged straight through the lot and was still standing at the end of it." Charred, gaping wounds dripping black blood onto the forest floor, growling in rage. "Tamar decoyed it, while myself and Jolee used his distractions to get inside its reach and finish it with our sabers." The coolness of her words did nothing to convey her memories of the events – the pounding, near-paralysing terror as several tonnes of raging darkside fury charged at you; the grating steam-engine sound of its breathing; the stench of it; the impossible speed it moved. The way the ground itself vibrated and shook.

"We've got four frag mines," Canderous noted.

Bastila shot him a sidelong look. "On Kashyyyk six weren't enough."

"We'll just have to be inventive then, won't we?" He favoured her with a slanted smile. She didn't like the look in his eyes – the eagerness that she saw there.

"Perhaps we should return to base," Jansa put in from behind them. "Come back with assault walkers and tanks."

She heard Canderous snort. "An extra day and a half, minimum. You think we can afford to get that much further behind this Sith Lord of yours."

Bastila was almost tempted to take Jansa's side, because she knew with absolute certainty that Canderous wasn't worried in the slightest about losing ground on Darth Malefic. He just wanted to bag a terentatek. The problem was though, he was right.

"Better to lose a bit of time than to end up as an aperitif," Jansa argued.

"We keep going." Bastila's voice held firm finality.

At least he didn't smile, or give any other sign of victory for that matter. She'd have been tempted to slap him if he had. His words, when he spoke, were all business. "We need to find ourselves a killing ground. Somewhere we can control the approach routes. This is right out." He gestured ahead of them, where the forest opened out slightly, dipping into a shallow trough between higher ground on either side. "That way looks a good bet, terrain-wise." He glanced down at the global positioning system built into the wrist of his armour. "And as luck would have it, the Well's in that direction too."

As he finished speaking, a strange noise, getting rapidly louder and nearer, drew Bastila's gaze up, through the gaps in the treetops.

The sky had, temporarily, turned almost black as a flock of several hundred giant Daragban bats passed directly overhead, disturbed from their roost.

-s-s-

The bulkhead doors slammed shut just ahead of the turbolaser impact.

Despite being shielded by more than a metre of solid plasteel, the shockwave was enough to pick Rath Gannaya up like a discarded toy and hurl him close on six metres through the air, before crashing him back down with brutal force. Sharp pain flared through his hip, the air blasting from his lungs, and the roaring noise in his ears drowning everything else out.

A fraction of a second later, Kreed slammed into the deck beside him, hard enough to leave a sizable dent in the metal.

As Rath struggled to draw breath back into his lungs, simultaneously hauling himself back to his feet using the wall as support, strong hands grabbed him, helping him rise. It was Ravelasch. Centimetres from his, the Defel's eyes were the only solidly defined part of him, giving the illusion that they were glowing.

Rath tried to speak, but only managed to produce a thin wheezing note. He wiped his hand across his mouth and it came away smeared in blood. Doubling over, he spat a mouthful of red-stained saliva. "Everyone accounted for?" he finally managed to get out.

Ravelasch inclined his head. "Two more of our brothers were lost during Revan's escape. Everyone else made it. Yourself and Master Kreed were the last out."

The Mandalorian cyborg groaned, as if on cue. He pulled himself up to his feet, glowering as he tested the operation of one mechanical knee joint. It seemed to be sticking, the servos skipping and jamming. There was a sizable looking swelling above his biological eye.

Looking away from him, Rath tried vainly to interpret something from Ravelasch's expression. But with a Defel that was always next to impossible. "I'm sorry for your losses," he said at length

"It is the way of the circle. Death is our ever-present companion on the path we walk. We do not fear her embrace."

_And you really believe a word of that?_ Rath hid a grimace.

A sense of unreality that was superficially similar to calm had settled in. Theda was dead. Three of the brothers were dead – more than had been lost in the previous six years. Another four of his men carried incapacitating injuries of various degrees of seriousness. Revan had escaped from their custody with an ease that was downright embarrassing, and given that they had a Hutt crime lord with his own personal battlecruiser after their blood, the chances of recapturing him in the near future seemed remote. To top it all, the _Shadow Dancer_ – his ship, effective home, and most prized possession – had now been destroyed.

How you were meant to respond to that was something he couldn't remotely fathom. His emotions seemed to have absented themselves entirely. "Try and get a message through to the _Ebon Hawk_. Tell them we need evac. Soon would be nice."

It was just going through the motions – reacting in a manner that the others would expect.

"It's going to take him at least sixteen hours to reach us." Kreed's voice was a bass rumble. "And that's assuming Seboba won't by jamming outgoing comms. Which we both know he will be."

"Aren't you just the font of good cheer?" Rath's lips twisted. _Do I hate you, Kreed? I think I might. If I could summon up the energy._ "I don't propose we just sit on our arses and twiddle our thumbs in the mean time. Why do you think we risked being vaporised getting those out?" His gesture indicated the pair of assault droids, each with modified ysalamari tanks built into their armoured torsos. Retrieving them had come within seconds of costing them both their lives.

Kreed didn't say anything, but the look he favoured Rath with spoke volumes.

Rath ignored it. It was easy. "There'll be boarding parties," he told Ravelasch. "I intend to be ready for them. We'll grab one of their landing shuttles and pay our old pal Seboba a visit."

"And Revan?" Kreed asked.

The looked at each other for several long and protracted seconds. Finally, Rath smiled tightly. "Has exactly the same problems that we do, I'd imagine."

-s-s-

Another violent jolt passed through Dreya's Bastion, the superstructure around them groaning ominously.

"What's going on?" Tamar asked T3 over his comm. unit. The lights around them flickered distractingly. Maintenance droids and member's of Dreya's workforce rushed past in various states of urgency and panic.

A warbling series of beeps quickly told him that docking bay three had now been destroyed in addition to docking bay six, and that the culprit was a Hutt battlecruiser.

"Any casualties?" Tamar wasn't entirely sure which answer he wanted to hear. In cold practical terms, 'yes' probably suited them better. The fact that both bays three and six had been targeted was certainly suggestive as to their attackers' intent – and that they had inside information.

The short, flat noise T3 made in response indicated that the utility droid didn't have any information on the subject.

"Wait a minute. Did Tee say _Hutt_ battlecruiser there?" Mission interrupted.

He looked round at her – her head tails held flat and tight, her expression pensive. "You know something about this?"

Mission seemed hesitant. "Maybe. Some Hutt crime lord tried to grab me on Nar Shaddaa. Seboba, his name was. Apparently, he's got some major beef with Gannaya's lot. I'm guessing he wants to grab you to put their noses out of joint as much as for the bounty."

"Information: Master, I am familiar with the name Seboba," HK-47 put in. "I told you about my former master on Sleheyron, Bochaba the Hutt, did I not? I believe it to be Seboba who was the main instigator behind my former master's assassination. It is likely that he took over the running of Bochaba's networks. By reputation he is a ruthless and violent individual, even by the standards of the Hutts."

Tamar thought that HK sounded approving.

"I too am familiar with the name," Yuthura murmured. As he looked at her, her lips formed a pale ghost of a smile. "An associate of Omeesh's."

"Oh?"

She shook her head. "There's no more to tell than that. Just a name I heard."

Tamar looked at her, concerned. Since their reunion she'd seemed strangely distant, something clearly troubling her. But right now was hardly the best time to be going into that. "Well I'm glad it's someone we're at least sort of familiar with who's trying to kill us," he muttered. "So much more heartening than it being a total stranger."

The attempt at humour fell decidedly flat.

T3 interrupted with the news that a small fleet of dropships and landing shuttles were on their way over. Dreya, apparently, was going through several different stages of apoplexy, although the Hutts were completely ignoring him.

"Which landing bay?"

"Beep-woo."

All of them, apparently. "We're closest to four. Meet us there as soon as you can."

T3's affirmative chimed in his ear.

"You had any luck with the data-core?" he added after a fractional pause.

According to T3, decryption had been successfully completed almost two hours ago.

"And was there anything useful on it?"

The answer he got back was prolonged and decidedly rude. T3 explained at indignant length that, firstly, it had been rather busy with other matters these past couple of hours. Secondly, that there were, in total, several entire teraquads of data on the core. And thirdly, Darth Auza hadn't seen fit to include any sections conveniently entitled 'Top secret incriminating evidence here!'.

Tamar apologised quickly before breaking the conversation off.

"Bay four, I'm guessing," Yuthura stated, a dry slant to her words. He looked at her again. She seemed . . . tense.

Finally, he nodded. "Our new Hutt friend is sending some visitors over. It'd only be polite to make sure they have a proper welcoming committee waiting." He slid his lightsaber free from his belt as he started walking rapidly. "And since they've gone and destroyed our only means of transport I'm sure they'll only be too happy to provide us with a ride out of here."

-s-s-

"Tell me about the Catcher."

Carth saw Yolanda jolt. She was in the middle of brushing her teeth, stripped down to her tank top. Anger flashed in the reflection of her eyes, but after a moment he realised it was directed primarily at herself – at allowing someone to catch her so far off guard.

"We're both still alive. I was presuming that meant he was dead," she stated neutrally. "Do you make a habit of sneaking up on women while they're washing?"

He ignored the second part. "He survived."

"Well that was careless of you, wasn't it . . . I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"Valdan," he answered, giving her the alias he'd been using on Berchest.

She spat into the sink, then rinsed her mouth out, gargling. "Right."

"In the same way that you're called Yolanda."

"You can call me Tera or Shossa if you prefer." She wiped her face on a towel, turning to look at him directly for the first time. There was a cold, unblinking watchfulness to her expression that was distinctly unsettling. Without make-up or any hint of adornment, she looked very, very hard. "So what exactly do you want to know about the Catcher, _Valdan_?"

"How about we start with everything you know about him, and go from there?" Carth suggested.

She moved past him, back to the sickbay. He followed close on her heels. "And what are you going to pay me for this information? I don't think you have anything I want."

"Let's consider it the fee for my not leaving you to die on Callius's streets, if you insist in thinking in those kind of terms." He sat down opposite her. "Or we could just pretend we want to be nice and cooperative with each other. That might be, oh, I don't know, quite pleasant?"

She snorted, but after a second or so of silence, inclined her head. Impressive cheekbones, he noted as he looked at her. Not the sort of person that the word pretty was remotely appropriate for, but definitely possessed of a certain something – like a particularly sleek and deadly space-fighter.

"The Catcher is a Sith Assassin. An extremely powerful Dark Jedi. Last I heard, he was in the employ of Darth Auza, at least in so far as he ever works for anyone outside of his own amusement and whim."

"You know more than that," Carth pressed when it became clear she had no intention of continuing. "More detail I mean. You made that clear on Berchest."

She didn't deny it. "I know anecdote and hearsay, most of which is probably exaggeration or downright fabrication. And fascinating though some of it is, I don't see how it's remotely relevant."

"We're stuck in hyperspace for the next few hours. You have something else pressing you need to do?"

"Well, my nails could use a little work . . ." She held up a hand, displaying calloused blunt-nailed fingers.

Carth's expression didn't so much as flicker.

Her lips quirked into a half-smile. "If the stories are right, he was from Adrapos. It's a planet spinwise along the inner rim from Berchest. One of the living dead, so they say."

Carth blinked. "The living _dead_?"

"Oh, I don't mean literally living dead." It came out as a drawl, but her expression remained tightly contained and watchful. "That's what they called them, though. It was a big news story about twenty years ago, I think, uniting the galaxy in a sense of moral outrage. For all of five minutes before everyone got a bit bored and depressed by it, and decided to change the channel."

It stirred a few very dim and distant memories. "Plagueships, right?" He snapped his fingers suddenly as bits and pieces came back. "There was an epidemic. In an attempt to safeguard the rest of the Adrapan population, their government shipped the infected off world in a fleet of specially made plagueships." He would have just have been starting out at the fleet academy at the time, lots of other things on his mind.

Yolanda smiled thinly. "That's the official line. In reality it was ethnic cleansing; the removal of undesirables and dissidents. There never was a plague. Not in the conventional sense. The Adrapos government conducted controlled releases of bio-weapons on their own people to start a panic, then used that as an excuse to shove more than five million of their enemies onto twenty vast, automated ten-kilometre long spaceships with barely enough supplies to last a week, before firing them off on a one way trip into hyperspace."

"You seem well informed on the matter."

Her smile took on decidedly dark and unpleasant cast. "Oh, not firsthand. It was well before my time. Guess who supplied the bio-weapons though."

"Jerstyl Daxar," Carth stated heavily.

"More than just a pretty face I see." A tiny headshake. "Lovely man, my old boss, don't you think?"

"So why did you work for him?"

The look in her eyes changed back to coldly watchful. "Now that's an entirely different story. And not one you can afford to pay for."

Looking at her, Carth felt a flaring surge of frustration. He pushed it aside. What could he say? _I'm trying to save the galaxy here. How about some cooperation?_ "So the Catcher was one of those on the plagueships."

"That's what I said, isn't it? The way I hear it, one of the ships malfunctioned about three years into its supposedly endless journey. Its hyperdrive failed, and it fell back into normal space on the edge of the Khar Zaran system."

Carth recognised the name of one of the Sith core worlds well enough. "Three years in hyperspace? Surely that would take you . . ." He tried to do some calculations. "Well out beyond the galactic rim, into the void?"

"Slow ships, Valdan," she murmured. "You don't waste modern tech on a vessel where the only purpose is for it to disappear forever." A dismissive gesture. "Anyway, all this was way before Revan, and compared with now, the Sith were barely more than a remnant, mainly preoccupied with infighting. No one expected to find anything of value on a plagueship, so the derelict vessel was left to drift for weeks before a down on their luck salvage crew decided to take a look."

"I'm guessing they weren't expecting to find anyone alive."

She nodded. "There were close on a dozen survivors. Out of a quarter of a million. Imagine it. Surviving for three years on a horrendously overcrowded vessel that has enough supplies to keep everyone properly fed for about a week, and barely enough power to sustain basic life support, let alone things like, say, proper lighting and waste disposal. I've tried to think of a hell worse than that, and to be honest I'm struggling. Imagine what you have to do to survive for three years like that."

Carth was imagining. He felt nauseous.

"One of the survivors was a nine year old boy. A very obviously force sensitive nine year old boy. Force sensitive children are a valuable commodity among the Sith. I'm sure the salvage team did very well out their find. Probably made enough to retire, if they were so inclined."

"And the other survivors?"

She gave him a measured look. "Were not force-sensitive, and therefore not valuable. Nothing was recorded about their fate. If it makes you feel better, imagine them living happily ever after."

It didn't particularly. "And what does he want with you?"

Yolanda shrugged, her expression one of studied indifference. "Loose end, I'd imagine. Though to be honest, I find his interest in you a far more fascinating subject."

Carth shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "I don't follow."

She clearly wasn't even remotely fooled. "Come now. He was seemed much more interested in you than me, don't you think? Now why would that be?"

Carth shrugged – said nothing.

After a moment, she pursed her lips. "Another thing I heard about the Catcher. Since you want to know everything. He has this obsession with death. I guess being around so much of it when you're a child might do that. Maybe that's why he remains with the Sith – because it gives him the chance to study his obsession at such close proximity. He certainly doesn't seem to be interested in power, in the conventional sense at least. Something of a loose cannon, all told.

"Anyway, that's straying from the point. As part of his obsession, he's reputedly developed a rather . . . unique method of interrogation. Supposedly, he creates some kind of force link to a person by leeching away some of their life-force and taking it into himself. We both had the misfortune of feeling that firsthand, didn't we?" A twist to her lips, and an echo of something that might have been fear in her eyes. "While the link still persists, he kills the person in question. As the brain dies, all of its carefully constructed defences collapse, allowing him ever so briefly inside. You can't resist it. You can't fight it. No mental discipline or resilience will protect you. Because you're already dead."

He stared at her. "How can you know this?" he asked finally.

"It's my business to know," she snapped. "You asked. I told." She paused, tilting her head back so she was looking at the ceiling rather than him. "He killed your friend, Valdan. Now, what do you think he could have seen in her dying brain that has got him so interested in you?"

Carth's lips tightened. He didn't say anything. The Catcher, he remembered, had used his real name.

"Now, I can't see a Sith assassin caring overmuch about a rather mediocre Republic intelligence asset going by the alias of Valdan Mayer, can you?" She looked back at him again – implacable. "But from your expression, I think you know exactly the real reason he wants you, don't you?"

Silence fell. Carth still had a whole multitude of other questions he wanted answered, but he could sense that any semblance of control he had over the conversation was well and truly gone. He was only going to end up revealing far more about himself than he was going to learn about her.

He stood up, turned on heel, and left.

-s-s-

Terentatek dung, perhaps unsurprisingly, stank.

The vast mound of it, easily enough to bury a human in, was relatively fresh. Less than a day old, certainly. Sticking out of it, badly scarred by digestive juices and bent out of shape, was a breastplate. It still bore enough traces of orange for its Republic origin to be clear.

The Sith, it seemed, had left plenty of _al fresco_ food to ensure that their pet didn't stray too far afield from the spot they wanted it to guard.

Bastila turned away, her nose wrinkling in distaste. Canderous was further up the slope of churned mud, inspecting the huge cage of badly buckled plasteel that had once housed . . . _their prey?_ . . . _their hunter?_ She still wasn't sure which. Rain dripped down through the foliage steadily, a grey shroud that muffled her other senses as much as the trees muffled and interfered with her perception of the force. It left her feeling tense; almost claustrophobic – and yes, she had to admit, scared.

You couldn't pretend away your feelings. That was clear enough to her now. Denial and repression were not what the Jedi code was about. It was about acceptance and understanding. A lot of people seemed to have lost sight of that though, listening only to the words.

She drew a shaky breath in. _So I accept my fear_.

Unfortunately, acceptance didn't make it go away. It wasn't the terentatek. At least, it was no more than peripherally the terentatek. That was just a physical manifestation, and in some ways, it even made things easier to have something tangible to focus on. No, her fear was the situation. She'd gone against the new Jedi Council's will. She was walking on a planet, which, if it hadn't been the place of Revan's fall, had been a very significant stepping-stone along the way. And she was about to do something she wasn't sure she remotely had either the strength or resolve for.

Her gaze turned to Canderous again, as grim and grey as the day. _Do you ever get afraid? Feel doubt?_ _Feel anything? _It wasn't something she could really ask him though.

Apparently noticing her gaze on him, he tossed the object he was holding so it landed with a heavy thud at her feet, splattering mud up the front of her robes. It was a Republic helmet, with a massive dent in one side of it. Anyone who'd been wearing it while the dent was inflicted was not likely to be in good shape.

"Someone left it some snacks to be going on with."

"I know." Her answer was heavy. There'd been so much brutality of late that one more piece was something almost to be taken for granted. That was the worst part. It almost didn't shock anymore.

Canderous grunted. Maybe he'd expected more of a reaction. He gestured at the churned up mud, then the surrounding trees with their torn off branches and gouged trunks. "It comes back here regularly. Its lair, near enough. This is where we fight it."

Bastila just nodded.

"Something troubling you, Princess? You seem preoccupied."

"I thought I asked you not to call me that," she said absently, going through the motions by rote.

"Yeah? Well you should know by now some things just ain't gonna happen." He favoured her with a slanted half-smile, rain running down the craggy contours of his camouflage-painted face. It faded quickly. "You sense something?"

"No."

He looked as if he was going to say something else, but Lieutenant Jansa's voice interrupted, thin and taut. "I see it, I think. The Well, I mean. A hundred metres north."

They exchanged a look. "Go take a look then," Canderous muttered. "It's what you're burning for, isn't it?"

Again, she said nothing, longing and dreading together. Of late, he seemed to be able read her feelings far too well. It rankled to that small prideful part that remained. A Mandalorian, with all the sensitivity – force and otherwise – of a rock, yet he was still better at discerning her emotions than she was his.

"Don't go down," he cautioned as she stepped past him. "If the terentatek traps you there . . ." He trailed off, then added. "And I might need your help in the fight."

That gruff admission startled her, but when she looked round at him, he'd already turned away. For a moment, she watched his broad, armour-plated back as he efficiently went about the business of laying mines in the churned mud, preparing his killing ground. Then she turned and walked up to where Jansa was standing.

"There." Jansa pointed between the trees while holding her global positioning system up for Bastila to see. Exactly the spot the map on Drumond Kaas indicated. Down to the metre."

At first glance, there wasn't much to see. There wasn't a whole lot more on second glance either. Just a clearing in the trees that was rather smaller than she'd been anticipating, with the ground dropping away, out of sight. From Xedra's words, she'd been subconsciously expecting something rather more impressive. Something with a kind of dreadful splendour.

She reached out with her mind, but there was nothing there for her to feel. Nothing that managed to penetrate through the persistent interference of the surrounding forest, at least. "Well, let's take a look then." Her words sounded over-bright and forced to her own ears.

Up close, the Vision Well resembled nothing so much as the holos she'd seen of sarlacc pits – a funnel of bare earth dropping steeply into a dark, mouth-like pit about eight metres in diameter. All it was missing was the fringe of thick, fleshy tentacles ready to ensnare anything unfortunate enough to blunder into the funnel.

The funnel of earth had been churned up by massive clawed feet, and sections of the stone lip of the well had collapsed inward, whether by natural erosion or the efforts of the terentatek, it was difficult to say at this range. Taking a deep breath, Bastila started to inch down the slope of slippery mud, her footing perilous. Behind her, she heard Jansa's breath catch.

As she got closer, she was able to pick out fragments of a spiral staircase, descending around the well's inside rim. Large sections had been broken off, rendering it impassable. Closer now, she could see that most of the damage had been inflicted recently, the exposed edges of broken stone still jagged, with none of the pervasive lichens and mosses having taken root.

Part of her wondered why Darth Malefic had gone to the trouble of leaving the terentatek, when he could have simply had the thing filled in to cover his tracks. But the answer was obvious enough.

You don't destroy something you intend to use again.

_And a taste of what it gives is addictive._ The thought made her shudder. It wasn't particularly cold.

The toe of her boot clipped a stone, knocking it loose from the mud and sending it clattering down into the well. From the time it took to fall silent in its bouncing descent, she estimated that it had fallen getting on for ten metres.

"Is . . . is someone up there?"

The voice, coming up from the well, trailed away into a ragged groan. Bastila jolted so hard in surprise she almost lost her footing. Her heart thumped hard inside her chest, and it took her several heartbeats to find her voice. "Who are you? Are you hurt?"

The pained, hollowly echoing cough that came by way of response answered the second part of that, if not the first. "Get away from here! Get away now!"

The vehemence surprised her. She resumed inching down the funnel slope. "I'm a Jedi. I can help you. If you're injured . . ."

A hollow noise that might have been intended as a laugh answered, before trailing off into more coughing. "Against that thing? Against the creature?"

"The terentatek?"

"I don't know what the damn thing's called! It . . . it . . . Asmunds. I saw it . . ." The voice trailed away again and Bastila heard a sound that she thought might have been a sob. Then, abruptly, it rose again, almost hysterical in pitch. "It keeps coming back. It's trying to get me. Clever . . . cleverer than you'd think. My legs are broken. I think my legs are broken . . .. My water's running out. Damn. Damn, it hurts . . ."

"We'll get you out of there," Bastila started.

"No!" The response was instant – angry; frightened. "Aren't you listening? It's still up there. I watched what it did to Asmunds. I don't want to watch – to hear – it do the same to you. I won't watch! I won't listen!"

"Shush. It's not here now. Do you think I could stand here, talking to you if it was?"

A grating, rather hysterical sounding laugh was the only immediate response. Then, "It was there . . . an hour ago? Maybe more . . . maybe less. Slavering and slobbering over me until it got bored. No, not bored. Until something else took its interest." The voice broke off briefly into more coughing. "You can feel its footsteps down here. The stone vibrates. I felt it walk away, and I felt it stop again. It hasn't moved since. Maybe it's sleeping. I don't know. But it's close. Very close."

Bastila digested the words. If it were as close as he implied, then surely she would have sensed it . . .?

But no, terentateks were highly resistant to the force, and with the interference from the trees . . .. She grimaced, scrambling rapidly back up the slope. Perhaps the terentatek on Kashyyyk had taken them so much unawares because of its lack of force presence, rather than any particular stealth.

The thought made her blood run cold.

"You think he's right?" Jansa asked.

Bastila's attention was too distracted to answer, scanning every inch of the surrounding forest, this time using the force in an effort to sharpen her existing senses rather than reaching out through it itself. She noted bent back branches and churned up mud and leaves – scratches in tree trunks, a giant staved in puffball. The traces existed in every direction though, and it was difficult to put them in order of age when they'd been created so closely together.

Jansa suddenly made a tiny, incoherent sound that had Bastila whirling.

The terentatek was watching them from about fifty metres away – a vast green-black shadow lurking between the trees, utterly silent and utterly still.

There was no roar. No growl. No challenge. It simply charged.

-s-s-

Juhani's lightsaber blades whirled, twin flashes of blue lightning casting wildly shifting shadows across the scarred and fire-blackened walls of the landing bay. Incoming blaster fire scattered and deflected away from her, leaving her unscathed – an eye in the storm of surrounding chaos.

The blast doors clanged open again, letting in another stream of reinforcements headed by a pair of giant, spider-like battle droids. The hail of blaster fire abruptly quadrupled in intensity, her efforts at deflecting it growing ever more frenetic and her forward momentum faltering

Abruptly crackling bolts of ionised energy leapt past her from Jolee's outstretched hand, flickering around the pair of droids and reducing them to matching piles of sparking, smoking scrap.

In the brief instant of respite that gave her, Juhani drew upon the force to augment her leg muscles and leapt forward, flying more than twelve metres right across the landing bay, directly into the middle of the densest group of their assailants. Her lightsabers traced breathtakingly rapid, ruthlessly efficient attack patterns, slicing through armour and flesh alike with similar ease. Somewhere behind her, she could hear the distinctive firing not of Zaalbar's bowcaster, punctuated by the Wookiee's bellowing battle cries.

The air stank of fried electrics and cauterised flesh. One Echani mercenary managed to switch from his blaster rifle to a pair of elegant looking vibroblades just in time to parry her attacks, but a force-enhanced flurry battered his defences aside. Moments later an incandescent blue blade sliced through his chest.

Briefly there was a respite – stillness and almost calm. A short distance behind them, the Republic gunship crackled with flame. Beyond the landing bay, the distant clamour of alarms could be heard.

Juhani drew in deep breaths, calming the edge of the instinctive Cathar berserker fury that was always there lurking, ready to try to usurp control, when she fought. As soon as she felt slightly steadier, she began to rebuild and reinforce the layers of defences and force enhancements she kept herself surrounded by. She tried unsuccessfully to block out the smell of cauterised flesh from the corpses cluttering the deck around her.

"Do you feel that?" Jolee murmured, moving to stand next to her.

After a fractional pause, she shook her head, regarding him curiously. "What am I supposed to be feeling?"

"Another force user. Throwing their weight around."

"There is a Dark Jedi on board?" She frowned in concern.

Jolee's head tilted fractionally to one side, as though he was listening to a distant sound. "No." Then, suddenly. "It's Tamar. I'd recognise that bonehead anywhere." He grimaced, seeming to strain, before shaking his head. "The idiot's got his defences up and isn't listening. I suppose it was stupid to think he'd sit tight and let himself be rescued."

"Can't you reach him by communicator?"

He let her hear the thin hissing of static that indicated the landing bay was being jammed.

"Can you tell where he is then?" She still had no more than the vaguest sense.

"Over there somewhere. Several hundred metres away at least. It's hardly pinpoint." He looked at her pointedly. "And it seems to be a sight more than you can manage. You need to work on your perceptions, girl. I could do better than that even when I was barely a Padawan. Not that I suppose I can blame you, given recent events. Remind me later, when things are a bit less fraught. We'll go over it."

Juhani inclined her head respectfully. "Master Bindo."

Jolee's grimace looked pained. "Please, girl. What did I tell you about that? If there's anything worse than lack of respect, it's respect."

There was a loud clang directly behind them. Belaya had finally managed to cut an opening through the landing bay floor, exposing the network of cramped tunnels and service ducts that lay beneath.

"I think the time is right for us to make ourselves scarce," Jolee muttered. Juhani nodded agreement.

A few seconds later, the landing bay doors burst open again, letting in another influx of ragtag troops. All they found though, was the still burning wreck of the Republic gunship.

Everyone else was gone.

-s-s-

Yuthura looked out of the dropship's cockpit, a wry twist to her mouth as she took in the scene. Her head tails lay motionless on her shoulders – tense. She gripped the hilt of her lightsaber firmly. "You think he took the opportunity to betray us?" She indicated the terrified looking pilot with a nod.

After a brief pause, Tamar shook his head. "I think the fact we were flying in the wrong direction was enough to give us away. And no matter that we gave all the correct responses."

"So, um, we do like, have a plan for getting out of this," Mission put in. "Um, don't we?"

The dropship they'd hijacked from Dreya's Bastion had put into the _Rancorous's_ forward port fighter bay, landing safely and sedately in the middle of it. Up to that point, everything had been going absolutely swimmingly.

Then what looked like several entire legions of heavily armed troops – assorted humans, Rodians, Weequay and Klatooinians, plus what looked to be a fairly hefty contingent of Echani mercenaries – had emerged from every direction at once, including beneath the landing bay deck and even abseiling down from the ceiling. Mixed in with the troops were a number of huge, gleaming battle droids, along with miscellaneous pieces heavy assault weaponry.

You didn't put a welcoming committee like that together on the spur of the moment. Obviously, their arrival had been anticipated.

"Suggestion: Master, exterminating the meatbags would appear to be a good first move. We could start with this one here."

"I'll bear that in mind," Tamar noted. Yuthura didn't detect any particular enthusiasm, watching him as he leant forward across the ship's controls. "I think maybe if we . . ."

He trailed off abruptly as everything around him powered down. From the back of the ship, Yuthura heard the soft murmur of hydraulics as the rear exit ramp spontaneously deployed. As she looked on, he tried several different control sequences in rapid succession, but nothing he did had any effect.

The pilot blanched, shying back from the controls and holding his hands up. "It wasn't me! I swear! I swear! I didn't do anything!" Yuthura could sense fear bordering upon hysteria radiating from him, and concluded that, if he was a liar, he was just about the best she'd ever seen.

"Query: shall I . . . dispose of him for you, Master?"

"No!" As the captured pilot tried to flinch back, Tamar sighed and reached out, gently touching the man's forehead.

Yuthura sensed him manipulating the force, and a moment later, the pilot slumped backwards, seemingly deep asleep. "Better that way for all of us," he murmured, before sighing heavily, looking disgusted with himself.

"I was merely offering to help, Master . . ."

"Woo-wee-be-beep," T3 chimed over the top of HK. Apparently, an external signal had been received and the dropship's computers had locked the utility droid out of the primary control functions at the same time as the manual controls were being shut down.

"Can you override it?" Tamar's voice contained a quietly grim urgency. She got the impression that underneath, he was fighting down the urge to lash out and thump the unresponsive controls in front of him.

"Beep-wop-woo-beep." Not without several hours work, was the gist.

"What systems can you still access?"

"Um, I hate to be picky and all, but I think they're getting ready to storm us." Glancing across at Mission, Yuthura saw the girl's head tails gathered in close around her throat. She was gripping her blaster pistols tightly, face pinched and nervous.

Yuthura didn't really have any reassuring words to give, although she herself felt surprisingly calm. Perhaps irrationally calm, given the circumstances. Her thoughts strayed to Seboba, and a pang of guilt briefly intruded. What she'd told Tamar earlier hadn't been a lie _per se_, but . . .

"Beep-beep-woo-beep-wee-bop . . ."

"Stop. Go back a bit. That includes the coolant systems, right?"

T3 beeped the affirmative.

"Then vent them. Every last millilitre."

"Woooo."

"Yes. That is rather the idea." Tamar's tone was light, but Yuthura could see the intensely pained look around his eyes. Part of her wondered if that had been the start of what happened to Revan – the only way of getting past those feelings had been to murder them stone dead. _There is no emotion_, taken to far too brutal and literal extreme.

"My compliments, master. Ingeniously nasty. I have to confess that I had started to think you had gone soft."

And that was surely a great help.

Before anyone could respond to HK, an amplified voice, clearly audible inside the dropship, boomed out. "Jedi Knight Revan, we have you surrounded and are in full control of the hijacked ship. You cannot escape. Surrender, and neither you nor your companions will not be harmed. Offer resistance, and you will compel us to respond with extreme force. You have thirty seconds to comply." It was so precise it sounded like a recording.

"Beep?" T3 inquired.

Tamar's eyes met Yuthura's. After a moment, Yuthura gave an almost imperceptible nod and they shared a wordless, near invisible smile. Then he looked quickly round to Mission.

She thrust her chin out with more confidence than Yuthura sensed that she felt, and simply tapped her belt. "Hey, worry about yourself. They'll never even see me coming."

"HK?" His voice was soft.

"Statement: As always I am ready to serve to the very best of my abilities, Master. You should not doubt that."

"Our goal is to get through all that out there as quickly and cleanly as possible. Not to rack up a body count." There was a rather pointed note to Tamar's words.

"Master, you constructed me with the most advanced tactical sub-processing unit available. I am insulted at the implication that you think me but a simple butcher. Although I am, of course, also capable of excelling in that role. Should it be required."

Tamar looked back to T3. "Go ahead."

Nothing happened.

"Beep!" T3's frustration was clear. "Beep-beep-woo-beep!" Although it was still able to access the coolant system, built in safeguards, designed precisely to prevent this kind of release, were resisting the utility droid's efforts. It was trying to work around them.

"This is your last chance," the voice from outside informed them, somewhat predictably, as the thirty seconds expired.

"Tee, any time now would be good."

"Beep." This time the noise T3 made was one of satisfaction.

The coolant fluid vented explosively at the same time the signal was given to storm the dropship. Stored at a stable temperature barely above absolute zero, it boiled and evaporated on contact with the landing bay's air, hissing angrily as it created vast clouds of freezing white vapour on all sides of the dropship simultaneously.

Those troops nearest the ship were frozen solid instantly, still locked in formation. Scores toppled over, shattering like brittle glass. Yuthura felt the pain, shock, and confusion of those slightly further away as they flinched and cowered back, desperate to escape the vapour's killing touch.

Beside her, Tamar's lightsaber ignited, brilliant cyan. Her own violet blade joined it a fraction of a second later. The clouds of vapour began to thin. She could feel the force gathering like thunderclouds around Tamar.

"Go." His voice was firm and commanding, containing not a hint of doubt.

In the corner of her vision, Yuthura saw Mission blur, then vanish as she activated her stealth field. Closing all distractions out, she fell into step with Tamar, advancing down the dropship's exit ramp. His presence at her side was strong and implacable, and she drew strength and confidence from it, reaching out ahead of her and using the force to amplify the general confusion and transform it into full-blown fear and panic. More troops tried to break and run, others opening fire at phantom targets only they could see.

Directly behind them, HK provided cover, an unceasing volley of shots from his blaster rifle slicing into targets with the precision of a surgeon operating with a laser scalpel.

The only accurate shots that came back were sporadic, originating from the various assault droids. Yuthura's lightsaber moved to block and intercept almost independently of conscious thought. Beside her, Tamar's did the same, together with her forming an impenetrable barrier.

Brilliant flashes of smoke and light and noise resounded, Mission rolling flash grenades across the deck. Their random seeming detonations intensified the chaos and gave the illusion that there were far more than just the five of them. Waves of buffeting force, originating from Tamar's outstretched hand, scattered Seboba's troops like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum and wiping the table in front of him clear of toy soldiers.

A clear path opened up before them. No one offered more than token resistance.

-s-s-

"It's stopped firing on the Bastion," Kreed noted sourly from the shuttle's pilot's seat. That seat still bore the blood of the erstwhile pilot, along with a gaping tear that spewed stuffing.

In normal circumstances, Rath thought disconnectedly, Theda would have been sitting in that seat.

He suppressed the thought angrily, struggling to concentrate on the here and now. Force knew, things were complicated enough. "Well, I doubt Seboba wants to destroy it. Some of his friends in the Exchange would be less than impressed by that particular action." His voice actually sounded controlled. Exactly as it usually did.

"It's more than that," Kreed insisted. "Look at the screens. The fighters are being recalled. The shuttles and dropships are heading back. We should have been challenged by now, but not a whisper." He grunted. "Something's got them stirred up like a nest of womp rats in mating season. I think we can both guess what that means."

"That Revan's had the same idea we have, and isn't proving a docile house guest." Rath kept the tone of his voice mild. "Only to be expected don't you think? There weren't exactly a whole host of other options once our Hutt friend destroyed both of our means of transport."

In the view screen, the _Rancorous_ – huge and scarred and ugly – grew steadily larger. "And that changes nothing?" Kreed asked, keeping their course steady.

The words were deceptive, Rath thought. Loaded. He gritted his teeth; kept his own response outwardly mild. "And what, exactly, would it change? If anything, it makes our job easier. Lets us slip in and take advantage while Revan and dearest Seboba keep each other occupied."

There was a lengthy pause. "Or lets us slip away unnoticed. Rendezvous with the _Hawk_. Cut our losses and live to fight another day."

"I thought you had more steel in you, Mandalorian." Still Rath remained outwardly calm. "I thought you wanted to test your mettle against Revan. And I thought you, above anyone, would appreciate the chance to take a bite out of the Hutt."

The pause this time was equally lengthy. "Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe even an old Mandalorian's perspective can change." Rath saw Kreed's massive shoulders shrug. Then he sighed. "Whatever. Just making a suggestion. You're the boss."

_I'm the boss_. It was a strange and bitter thought.

The _Rancorous_ kept on getting steadily larger in front of them.

-s-s-

Bastila jumped back just in time to evade a pulverising smash from one of the terentatek's front claws. The impact made the ground shake and left a deep crater in the damp mud. She tried to counterattack, but was off balance and at the limits of her reach, the tip of her lightsaber no more than scraping the armoured hide of the monster's massive forearm.

It hissed, a blast of stinking breath issuing from a mouth that could easily swallow her whole. Teeth, like giant shears, clacked together noisily. Another swinging arm, which would have torn her in half had it connected, sent her scrambling rapidly backwards again.

Sweat ran down her face to mix with the rain. Her breath was coming too fast already.

The biggest problem was that she couldn't get close enough to it. For all the terentatek's truly monstrous, ground-shaking size, it was terrifyingly fast and agile. If she was to get near enough to lay her lightsaber on its flesh, she knew she had to kill it instantly. Anything less, and the next moment it would have her in its grasp and tear her apart.

So all she could effectively do was run, and as soon as she started to slow or tire . . .

On its initial charge, an attempt to wrap it in a stasis field and hold it – to buy herself some time – had slid straight off as if it wasn't there. And then it had been on top of her – a monstrous, stinking mass of animal fury: shatteringly powerful; frighteningly huge.

She could feel its hate – hot and bloody. It wasn't simply a predator. It didn't hunt simply from instinct and the need to feed. It felt like a living black hole of darkside energy; a ravenous manifestation of it.

It lunged again, leading with its monstrous jaws.

Again Bastila danced back out of range. This time though, she misstepped. The lip of the funnel was there beneath her heel, mud sliding out from beneath her. Her attempts at maintaining her balance only made things worse, and suddenly she was tumbling backwards, head over heels down the slope, crying out involuntarily.

She slammed into the stone lip of the Vision Well with crunching force. Her lightsaber bounced free of her grasp, spinning up in the air, yellow blades flashing, before tumbling out of sight into the Well's gaping mouth.

Her breath was slow to catch. She groaned, her ribcage feeling like one massive bruise. Suddenly there was a sharp, splintering crack.

Bastila rolled frantically as the lip of the well crumbled and broke off beneath her. For a moment, she felt herself hanging over empty air, sliding back. Then she stopped herself, hands clawing desperately into the wet mud and gripping tight as she gasped. For a moment, her legs swung ineffectually in empty space, before her feet managed to find purchase on the broken stone.

From below came a stifled groan, providing brief reassurance that she hadn't managed to crush the person at the bottom of the well to death beneath falling debris. Then a shattering roar from startlingly close by jerked her attention back to more immediate matters.

The terentatek was crouching down over the edge of the pit, fishing for her with its front claws. As she looked up at it, she could feel its breath on her face like heat from a furnace. Its eyes, relatively tiny on either side of its huge, armoured skull were dead black – infinite tar pits.

Gritting her teeth, straining with effort, she started to inch herself away from it, around the well's rim.

A claw large enough to completely impale her slammed down hard, knocking mud and debris loose in a miniature landslide. It missed hooking through the meat of her shoulder by a matter of millimetres. It did, however, manage to slice through her Jedi robe, snaring it. Growling eagerly, it began to winch her up with the tiny hold it had.

She groaned, struggling to hold on, muscles straining, the skin of her hands beginning to tear. Abruptly the entire sleeve of her robe ripped away, and it lost its grip, its growl changing to one of angry frustration.

Before it could try again, a blaster shot rang out. The terentatek howled, the sound deafening at such close proximity, making Bastila's skull resonate. She sensed its massive bulk shift and draw back as its attention transferred to this new target.

It was Jansa, and her blaster was only slightly more useful against something that size than a water pistol. A second shot hit the thick hide of the terentatek's torso. Bastila doubted that it even managed to tickle.

The ground shook. Bastila swore beneath her breath. Jansa didn't stand a chance.

With urgency bordering on desperation, she made herself concentrate and block out all distractions. Instead of directing the force at the terentatek, which would more than likely resist her efforts, just as before, she used it to whip up the leaves from the forest floor in a swirling maelstrom and blow them in a flurry into its face.

Temporarily blinded, sneezing convulsively, its charge faltered, allowing Jansa to scurry away. For the moment at least.

Using the brief respite, Bastila hauled herself upwards, until she could stand again, precariously balanced on the Well's edge. "I'm down here, idiot!" she yelled up, hoping to draw its attention back onto her.

_Where the hell is Canderous?_ She sent a pummelling wave of force slamming into the terentatek's back legs as it ignored her shout.

The attack bounced off, seemingly without adverse effect, though it did succeed in drawing the creature's attention back to her, which was success of a sort. Mud and more debris broke loose and slid down the pit towards her as its shadow loomed over her . . .

Jansa shot it again, hitting the side of its muzzle.

_No, you idiot. Just run_.

The terentatek whirled back again . . . and a vast geyser of earth and fire exploded between its legs. This time its enraged bellow also contained definite elements of pain.

More blaster shots slammed into its armoured head, again and again. These shots were much heavier than those from Jansa's gun, and actually seemed to have some effect, snapping its skull back with each hit. It charged, away from the well, and away from Jansa. The noise coming from it sounded like an overheating steam engine.

_Canderous. About bloody time._

As the ground shook beneath its pounding footsteps, she scrambled back up the muddy slope.

At the top, she paused to catch her breath, crouched on her haunches. The terentatek's broad, spike covered back was turned to her, and it was in the process of trying to squash a tiny looking dull-grey metal figure that was dodging away from it between the trees, pausing every time it had brought itself a little time and space to fire off another volley of shots from its heavy repeater.

She watched, heart in mouth, as a series of pulverising blows got closer and closer to landing on their target. One swing hit a tree beside Canderous so hard it almost knocked it over, the silver-white trunk splintering but holding just barely.

Then Canderous stumbled, falling on his back amid the leaves and mud.

Her lightsaber was somewhere at the bottom of the well, and like most Jedi, that was the only weapon she ever carried. Her force powers seemed to bounce straight off the terentatek to almost no effect. If she didn't do something though, and fast, he was as good as dead.

Another grenade went off directly in the terentatek's face, flashing brilliantly. It reeled back, roaring in fury, and Canderous managed to get his feet under himself again. A flailing arm, as thick as a tree-trunk itself, caught him a glancing blow.

He flew almost six metres through the air before another tree trunk interrupted his flight. Without his armour, the impact would have probably killed him. As it was, he fell limply on the forest floor, twitching feebly.

Its vision clearing, the terentatek closed in fast for the kill, black blood dripping thickly from its nostrils and mouth. Canderous tried to rise again and failed, slumping back.

Bastila summoned lightning, not in instinctive desperation as she had in the swamps of Drumond Kaas, but coolly and deliberately. The air around her ionised and crackled with latent static. Electricity ripped from her fingers with ferocious intensity.

It missed the terentatek entirely.

The terentatek had never been the target.

Instead, the lightning cracked against the tree the terentatek had almost knocked over when swinging at Canderous and missing. There was a sharp splintering noise, the trunk charring black and some of the smaller branches bursting into flames.

Bastila followed up with a sharp force push. The tree's trunk broke jaggedly, toppling forwards, guided in the correct direction by the way she'd pushed it. Just as the terentatek started to scoop Canderous up towards its gaping maw, the tree slammed into its back.

There was a sickening crunch and it collapsed, face first into earth.

Canderous fell from its grasp. Thankfully he was still moving, albeit weakly. Bastila let out a long breath, shuddering in relief.

The terentatek let out another thunderous roar that must have echoed through the forest for kilometres. It started to struggle out from beneath the fallen tree. It didn't seem to be anything worse than stunned.

Bastila stared at in disbelief.

The tree rolled off entirely. Canderous had managed to haul himself up, onto his knees. His repeater had been knocked from his grasp and was nowhere immediately in sight. He was in the process of unstrapping his Baragwin made vibro-sword from across his back.

The terentatek lunged at him, jaws-first, sliding rapidly across the forest floor on its underbelly.

Somehow, Canderous managed to twist away, simultaneously driving his vibro-sword down into the top of the monster's skull as its teeth closed on empty air. For a moment, the thick bone of the terentatek's skull resisted, but she could see Canderous grimacing, putting the entire weight of his not inconsiderable bulk behind the blow.

Finally, there was a crunching, splintering noise and the sword went in, almost up to the hilt. It pierced right through the creature's brain, the palate of its mouth, and then its tongue, pinning its enormous jaws together. It spasmed violently, back legs clawing reflexively at the earth. One last shudder, and finally it lay still.

A moment later Canderous staggered, before sitting back clumsily with an audible grunt. Bastila hurried across to him.

Up close, she could see how the terentatek's claws had left deep dimples in the metal of his armour. Blood was trickling steadily down one side of his face. As he looked up at her, his eyes were alarmingly unfocussed. After a moment, when he became aware of her scrutiny, he forced a twisted looking grin, bloodstained teeth giving it a decidedly savage aspect.

"See, told you how proper preparation was the key. Fell right into our trap." His laughter boomed.

-s-s-

Carth slid wordlessly into the co-pilot's seat alongside seat Witnik Nayn.

"So it went that well, did it?" the Sullustan inquired after a lengthy period of silence.

"I don't know what you mean," came the sour retort.

"Uh-huh." Witnik waggled his head in the Sullustan equivalent of a knowing nod. "She's attractive then, is she?"

"What?" Nonplussed didn't begin to cover it.

A shrug. "Well, you obviously didn't get what you want. The sulky set of your bottom lip tells me that. And if she was a man, you'd just have threatened to beat the tar out of him until you got what you needed. You can be quite the grim and intimidating bastard when you need to be. Attractive women, though – they leave you flustered. You let them walk all over you."

Just for a moment, he was left speechless. "I most certainly do not," he managed to bluster.

The only response that evinced was an indulgent chuckle.

Carth's teeth set on edge. "You know, over the years I'd forgotten quite how much crap you talk, Witnik. I guess memories smooth off the rough edges."

Witnik glanced at Carth sidelong. "You're telling me she's not attractive then? I mean, I'm hardly an expert, and human women aren't really my taste. Strange faces and way too tall. But you pick up some things over the years, living among your kind, and well . . . what's the saying? All the requisite bits look like they're in the right place."

Carth made an incredulous noise. "Her attractiveness or otherwise has nothing to do with anything. It's simply not relevant in the slightest." He realised his voice was rising much too loud, and clamped his jaw shut.

"Ah-ha. So I was right first time. You _do_ find her attractive."

"We are so not having this conversation."

That simply produced another chuckle, but Witnik did, for a wonder, let the matter drop. More silence settled in.

"How long till we arrive at Veltris?" Carth asked after a while. It hadn't just been his difficulties with Yolanda that had driven him to take refuge on the bridge.

"An hour. Maybe less."

Carth grunted. "We want to change our jump plan. Come out of hyperspace early."

Witnik's rapidly indrawn breath whistled through his teeth. "Did you just knock your head or something?"

"I'm serious."

"This isn't a state of the art fleet cruiser, Car . . ." He stopped himself abruptly, realising he was about to use his real name. "We're . . . well, we're a couple up from a heap of junk, but my computers aren't anything like good enough for those kind of calculations. First rule of hyperspace. Remember that? You don't try and change the jump plan mid way."

"I know the rules well enough, and we've both done this kind of improvisation in the past."

"Not around a fraking solar gravity well we bloody haven't." Witnik muttered something else unflattering beneath his breath. His mouse-like ears quivered.

"Look, Veltris is a relatively clearly system beyond the fourth planet. It's not that much of a risk."

"Conveniently forgetting the Vel Stradum asteroid belt for the time being, eh?"

Carth winced, realising he had forgotten that small detail. "If we come out early enough we'll still be well clear of that. Witnik, we've both had to do emergency hyperspace ditches in the past. Think of this as the same thing, if it helps."

"The key thing about those other occasions," Witnik muttered, "Being that they were emergencies and we had no choice in the matter. How in the name of the force is this like that?"

Carth took a deep breath, weighing up carefully how to explain. "If we stick to the initial jump plan, someone is going to be there waiting for us. Someone we very much don't want to meet."

About thirty minutes ago, his thoughts drifting, tiredness drawing him in, he'd found himself thinking, for no reason he could fathom, about details of their hyperspace exit co-ordinates. As suspicion flared in him, he'd caught a brief flash of a dark presence, distantly connected to him. It had vanished quickly, but it had definitely been there. And he'd known with cold certainty that he'd just told the Catcher their flight plan.

Witnik looked at him strangely. "Is there something you want to tell me? This isn't the first time you've implied . . . strange knowledge." A hesitation, before he continued cautiously. "I . . . I heard something about your son. He get it from your side of the family?"

Carth was startled into a parody of laughter. "Me? Oh come on, Witnik, you can't be serious." He shook his head, then sighed. "I've spent quite a lot of time around Jedi fairly recently, and believe me, I have less force sensitivity than the average Arborean tree slug." A pause, before he added quietly, "Dustil gets it from Morgana's side. One of her great-great-great uncles, or something, was a Jedi Knight. And there were a couple of others – not Jedi, but those with . . . let's say, eccentric tendencies. They say it can skip whole generations and manifest randomly somewhere on down the line. No one really knows how it works."

"So how do you know?"

Carth shook his head again. "Just trust me. If we come out of hyperspace where we planned, we will regret it." If it wasn't the Catcher himself waiting to grab them, it would be his agents. Witnik's ship was not built to fight them off, no matter how skilled the pilot.

"The Catcher can see into your head, Valdan?"

Both of them looked around, startled. Carth had left the door connected the bridge to the rest of the ship open, and that had allowed Yolanda to sneak up on them without them noticing. Now, as they watched, she slid herself nonchalantly into a spare seat and raised an eyebrow enquiringly. How she'd gotten out of sickbay, which was supposedly locked and alarmed, was an open question.

"I'd do as he says, Sullustan," she said when it became clear Carth wasn't going to answer. "Loathe as I am to say it, I think he does know what he's talking about."

-s-s-

Tamar both heard and felt Mission's cry of pain. It punctured through the almost trance state he'd fallen into that had reduced the universe around him to a simple matter of combat – reaction and physical response with no other complications.

He span back, and saw her slumped against the wall of the dingy metallic corridor, her stealth field flickering around her. A vaguely spider-like battle droid had emerged directly behind them, and was scuttling forward to finish her off. As he watched, T3 attempted to block its path, but the utility droid was simply batted aside, spun through 360 degrees and bounced hard off the wall.

Immediately he force-jumped to intercept.

His initial lightsaber strike simply bounced of the spider-droid's shields with a resounding _crack_. It was enough, though, to get its attention away from Mission and onto him.

Rending metal pincers came within millimetres of finding his flesh as he danced away from their grasp. Volleys of blaster fire came even closer, leaving a staccato line of black scorch marks along the wall behind him.

Another lightsaber blow was deflected away by the droid's shields, although they were now flickering, obviously weakened. As lunged at him with its pincers again he smashed it back against the wall with a sweeping wave of force.

It bounced straight off, obviously of impressively sturdy construction. Immediately it got its feet under itself again and started scuttling straight back towards him. He turned a couple of blaster shots aside with his lightsaber, the spider droid's shields sputtering as T3 recovered and started taking pot-shots at it.

As it came into range, Tamar lunged forward like a fencer. This time, the shields sputtered out entirely and the tip of his lightsaber sliced deep into the droid's metallic torso. Half its legs immediately stopped working and it tipped over onto one side. Briefly, it struggled to right itself, but he drove the lightsaber in deeper. Finally it died entirely, sparking intermittently and leaking black smoke.

Yuthura and HK, he noted, were about twenty metres further along the corridor engaged in their own firefight with a squad of half a dozen Weequay. The brief sense he received from Yuthura suggested that they were on top of things.

He dropped down to his knees beside Mission, gently holding her back as she struggled to rise. "Steady." His thumb found the trigger on her belt that turned her stealth unit off, and she resolved fully into view.

The blaster shot had struck her halfway down her back, charring the flak vest that was a part of her light armour. Her teeth clenched tightly together and Tamar didn't like the way her head tails were trembling. She was trying to apply a kolto pack to the wound, but was struggling to twist round far enough to reach properly.

Wordlessly he eased the kolto pack from her grasp and applied it for her, hearing her gasp and feeling her shudder. Focusing, he sent gentle feelers of force into her flesh, helping repair burned skin and damaged tissue.

Mission made a gulping noise. "Um, thanks." She looked somewhat embarrassed. "Sorry. It caught me unawares . . ."

She'd just started to rise again when the entire corridor between them and HK and Yuthura exploded.

-s-s-

"Perhaps you could attach it your wrist with a piece of string," Canderous commented to Bastila as she retrieved her lightsaber from the hard, broken ground of the Well floor. "You know, like they do with small children and mittens, to stop them losing them."

Bastila ignored him, carefully inspecting the damage. There was a massive dent towards one end of the hilt, along with several other scratches and abrasions. Depressing the ignition stud produced only a brief, spluttering noise. Neither of the two blades ignited. She switched it off again.

"Broken?" he inquired.

She nodded distractedly. The panel in the side that gave access to the inner workings had buckled, and she had to strain to open it. Inside was a mess, all three crystals jolted out of alignment and several other critical components knocked out of their proper housings. It was going to take a lot of painstaking work to get it working again, if it was even salvageable at all. Sighing to herself, she closed it up again and stuck it through her belt.

"Here, take this."

She blinked at Canderous, startled as she realised that he was offering her his vibro-sword.

"It won't bite," he said after a short while, when she made no move to accept it. "And it's not like it's a betrothal gift. I don't expect anything from you in return."

After a moment longer, she shook her head. "No, I won't need that kind of weapon for what I'm about to do." A pause, then, somewhat awkwardly, "But thank you for the offer."

Canderous shrugged and sheathed the weapon across his back again. "Suit yourself."

She took a deep breath. "It's time, I think." Then. "I need to be alone to do this. No distractions."

He didn't say anything; didn't make any move right away either. The look on his scowling, granite-hewn face was a strange one. "You okay?" he asked finally.

"You're the one who's injured."

His shrug eloquently communicated, _bah, you call this injured?_ "Wasn't what I meant, and you know it, Princess."

She met his gaze levelly. "I don't think there's anything to be gained by putting this off, do you?"

Another shrug, and he turned away from her, walking towards the rope winch leading back up to the surface. "I know this scares you," he said with his back still turned to her. His voice was difficult to interpret. "No shame in that. I . . . respect the way you're dealing with it." Then the winch started up with a motorised hum, hauling him upwards.

She was glad – she had absolutely no clue how to respond to that. She watched his back right up until he'd reached the top and disappeared from view.

The light that filtered down from the surface was pale and diffuse. It had stopped raining about half an hour ago, but water was still trickling steadily down grooves in the stone walls. The floor beneath her feet was damp and muddy.

She let out the breath she'd been holding, and tried to quiet the whirring of her thoughts.

It had taken them over an hour to get the Republic soldier – Chabe Landar his name was, though he'd been loath to give that up – back up to the surface. Both his legs had been broken in the fall to the bottom of the well, and he'd been suffering from a combination of dehydration and blood loss. The worst of the damage, Bastila suspected, was mental though. She'd done what she could for his physical injuries – which wasn't much more than make him more comfortable; the leg breaks were bad enough that they'd almost certainly need surgery, well beyond her abilities. Then she'd put him into a healing trance, leaving him with Jansa.

Her gaze cast about her, but there wasn't a whole lot to see down here. Inside, the Vision Well was no more spectacular than it had appeared from the surface. In many ways, it was almost a let down.

Perhaps she'd built it up too much in her head from listening to Xedra's words.

For starters, there was almost nothing in the way of decoration – just lots of very plain stone. The way it had been carved was . . . slightly odd, creating strange geometries she wasn't entire sure she grasped – not from the perspective she got from standing at the bottom of it, anyway. The overriding impression, though, was of a piece of purely functional design, created for one very distinct purpose, with no adornment of unnecessary flourishes.

Given what she knew, she supposed that made sense. The Daragban's had built it in a hurry, in a state which must have been akin to controlled panic. There would have been no time for architectural niceties or indulgences.

Smoothing down her torn and mud-streaked robes, she sat cross-legged on a relatively dry piece of ground. The stone was cold and uncomfortable beneath her.

Sensed through the force, the well wasn't quite what she'd been expecting either. Not that she'd had any clear idea what to expect. Just not this.

Initially there didn't seem to be anything there to sense. Until you noticed that the pervasive background of interference from the forest was simply . . . gone. Indeed, there was a kind of pin-sharp clarity that, if you concentrated on it long enough, became quietly exhilarating.

If you concentrated for even longer, you began to sense other things too. Little flickers; residue of distant sorrow and darkness, whispering so softly she couldn't quite hear, no matter how hard she strained. It was very subtle, to the point that she half wondered if it was nothing more than her imagination, projecting things that weren't there.

She closed her eyes – tried to find the centre of calm and tranquillity she would need.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing – the thing that had a tiny part of her gibbering quietly in fear – was that she knew how it worked, and exactly what she had to do. Where the knowledge had come from, she had no idea. One moment it had just been there: totally clear and transparent, as if on some level she had always known.

Slowly, carefully, she began to draw on the force, readying herself to step past the point of no return.

The Well spoke to her.

-s-s-

As the contact with Tamar broke off, Yuthura climbed back to her feet. Beneath her, the floor seemed to be tilting through slow loops and her head felt truly horrible. Perhaps she'd lied when she'd told him she was okay.

A ragged piece of shrapnel had embedded itself in her left bicep. Gritting her teeth, she ripped it loose, blood streaming thickly from the re-opened wound down her arm. Healing force, channelled through the torn flesh, gradually slowed the blood flow to a trickle.

One of the Weequay had hit an exposed pipe that ran along the wall. It must have been a power line, or something similar.

All told, it was something of a minor miracle that had been the worst injury she'd suffered. HK-47, standing directly behind her, had blocked off the worst of the effects of the explosion though.

She glanced back at the assassin droid with a sense of vague distaste. Although it looked rather blackened and dented, it still appeared to be fully functional, its shields having held out well. Its eyes flared amber at her scrutiny. "Query: are you looking at me, meatbag?"

"Just checking you weren't damaged in the explosion," she said.

"Assurance: I am fully functional. Would you care for a demonstration?"

"Perhaps I'll pass right now." All of the Weequay, thankfully, had been dealt with. There'd still been one standing when the explosion hit, but presumably, HK had eliminated it while she was still on the floor, struggling with small matters like clinging on to consciousness.

HK had turned around and was inspecting the new formed blockage in the corridor behind them. In the middle of all the twisted metal something was still burning, everything glowing a cherry red colour that was almost cheerful. Waves of heat radiated from it, and it was clearly impassable. "The master . . ."

"Is fine," she stated. Their minds had touched briefly, and they'd both taken pains to assure themselves of that fact.

"You are certain?"

"Quite certain." She supposed that the droid's loyalty and concern for Tamar should have been touching, but if she was honest, she found it closer to downright creepy.

Stifling a groan, she searched the corridor ahead for signs of movement. Her surroundings were intensely familiar, and each moment she could feel carefully roped off, buried parts of her past breaking free, forcing their way to the surface like rotten corpses rising up from the grave. It wasn't a pleasant sensation.

Indeed, it was difficult to think straight at all. The dull pain in her skull wasn't helping.

A significant part of her childhood had been spent being transported on ships similar to this – these dingy, dirty corridors with there exposed pipes, foul air and chemical and radiation leaks, no expense wasted on parts of the ship that only hirelings, lackeys and slaves would ever get to see. The upper decks, where the Hutts themselves were housed, would be opulent to an insane degree, even on a warship like this. Down here in the bowels of the vessel, though, was another matter entirely.

Dim lighting flickered and hummed constantly. Smoke from the explosion still tasted acrid on the air, the atmospheric scrubbers doing no more than keeping things at the bare minimum survivable standard.

"Come on," she gestured ahead of her. "Follow me."

Last time she had been in a place like this she had been a powerless; a thrall who existed purely because of her value as a commodity. Now though . . . Now was very different.

There was a kind of grim comfort and satisfaction to the thought.

They reached a branch in the corridor. "Straight ahead," Yuthura stated flatly. She could feel anger thrumming fiercely beneath the surface – a thousand remembered cruelties and abuses, both witnessed and personally experienced. As the smoke stung her eyes, it felt like each forward step was taking her further back in time and further into the darker recesses of her own head. It wasn't rational, but it was powerful. Difficult to fight.

"Correction: that direction would be better for us to rendezvous with the master."

Yuthura looked at HK coolly. "Are you an assassin droid or a poodle?"

"Have a care, meatbag. My programming only forbids me from harming my master. Other orders can be . . . reinterpreted."

"Our goal is to reach the command decks and assume control," she told it flatly. "That hasn't changed."

"Technically not . . ."

"Tamar and the others will rendezvous with us there. Trying to find each other in this warren is going to turn into a farce."

Yuthura started walking again, not waiting to debate the matter further. "Besides, I thought you would be eager." She realised then that her own eagerness burned, the fires fed with each indrawn breath. She told herself it was under control. "You get the chance to hunt some Hutt-sized game."

-s-s-

"See? I don't know what you were worried about. Perfectly routine." Carth's attempt at sounding nonchalant failed to come off in the slightest.

The Vel Stradum asteroid belt was visible on the viewscreens, no more than a few thousand kilometres in front of them. In hyperspace terms they'd missed emerging right in the middle of it, which would have been . . . interesting, by around half a second.

Witnik directed a withering look his way, but didn't deign to speak.

"Although we do have a reception committee waiting for us." Yolanda indicated the sensor screens, which showed a cluster of ships a few million kilometres inwards.

"They could be there for absolutely any reason whatsoever." The doubt in Witnik's voice was clearly audible though.

"Exactly where we would have emerged from hyperspace if we hadn't had a change of plan?" Carth didn't need to look at Yolanda to know that one of her eyebrows was raised in that particular way she had. "And well away from any recognised space lanes."

Witnik had no answer to that. His ears twitched.

Carth took a deep breath. "Any sign they've spotted us yet?"

"They haven't made any obvious moves."

He nodded quickly. "Okay. We power down everything except bare minimum life support, and I take us into the asteroid field on manoeuvring jets. There we find a heavy metal asteroid to hang out next to and wait for them to realise we aren't going to show. Any arguments?"

There were none.

A few minutes later the bridge was considerably dimmer and quieter, the only sound the whisper-soft electrical hum of the controls in front of them. You didn't really notice the pervasive other noises that every spaceship made until suddenly they were absent. It was somehow eerie.

Composing himself, Carth began to guide them ever so gently forwards.

"There is one problem that's just occurred," Yolanda said suddenly.

_Oh yes?_ "And what's that?"

"If the Catcher was able to find you in hyperspace, what's to stop him finding you again now? We may just be making ourselves into sitting guntek birds."

Carth didn't say anything straight off, concentrating on manoeuvring the ship. In the viewscreen asteroids loomed like floating mountains.

"It's a good question . . . Valdan." Witnik put in.

It was. He moistened his lips. "I've only ever felt the Catcher connect to me when my mind's been quiescent. Either when I'm asleep, dreaming, or when I'm doing nothing except letting my thoughts drift. As long as I keep active – like now – there shouldn't be a problem."

After a pause, Yolanda spoke again. "That could just mean _you're_ only able to sense him when you're not distracted by anything else. He could be with you all the time."

"Then why is our welcoming committee still sitting around, twiddling their thumbs? If he was in here now, he'd know what we were doing." Carth shook his head stubbornly, "No, I think it takes him a lot of effort to reach me, and he can only do it intermittently. Whatever link he's forged with me, it's not active all the time."

It _sounded_ like it made sense, at least. His mouth felt dry. Put like that, it also sounded absolutely terrifying.

"You're sure on that, are you? Willing to gamble our lives on it?"

Abruptly, Carth came to a decision. "Take the controls, Witnik." He started to unstrap himself from the flight seat.

"What are you doing?" the Sullustan asked.

"Going to sick bay." He could feel a patina of sweat forming on his brow. The idea that his thoughts were no longer his own – that they might be inadvertently betraying them, even now . . . "Yolanda's right. We can't take this risk."

"What are you going to do there?" Witnik sounded concerned.

"I'm going to put myself under. So far under I'm not even capable of dreaming. I'm pretty sure he can only get glimpses of what I'm explicitly thinking and seeing, so if I can't think about anything at all . . ." He trailed off. "While I'm under, make a hyperspace jump. Make several hyperspace jumps, in fact. And don't, whatever you do, let me know where we are. If I don't know something, there's no way he can."

"He might have linked to me too," Yolanda said quietly as he started walking past her. "You were there on the bridge. You saw what happened. He could have linked to both of us."

He stopped and glared at her. "Have you felt him in your head? Has he come to you in your dreams?"

Wordlessly, she shook her head.

"Then you're okay, I think. I'm betting he can only be bonded to one person at a time, and like you took such delight in telling me, it's _me_ he's interested in." And Carth was starting to get some uncomfortable thoughts on why that interest might exist.

He strode past her, off the bridge.

_Damn it Tamar, sometimes I wish to hell I'd never met you_.

-s-s-

"She'll be okay."

Canderous's gaze snapped round to Jansa, glowering at her. She flinched and looked away from him quickly. "Yeah. Of course she will. That's not even a question."

_What do I care?_

More than he should.

Abruptly he stood up, ignoring the protests of stiff and battered muscles. He walked back over to the corpse of the terentatek, huge and terrible even in death. After staring at it for several seconds, he freed his sword from his back. Custom dictated that he take a trophy, but he didn't make any immediate move to do so, just standing there, looking at it. The huge, stinking, dead mass of it.

In theory, one of the greatest hunts a Mandalorian could undertake – something to be sung of with pride in a warrior's list of conquests and deeds.

Yet he . . . didn't care.

An almost imperceptible headshake, and he sheathed his sword across his back again. There was no clanhold, on which's wall he could mount the skull. And no one would ever recite his deeds. Least of all himself.

It wasn't self pity. It was simple acknowledgement of fact.

_Things change, and if you don't change with them you become obsolete . . . extinct._ A sour grimace twisted his face.

There was a sound behind him, from the Vision Well. He turned around, in time to see Bastila pulling herself over the lip and standing up. She was a mess, robes covered in mud, one arm and shoulder torn away to leave the arm beneath bare. Her hair was twisted and tangled, half-fallen out of its normal orderly and practical arrangement. Her face looked extremely pale.

As she got closer, he saw that her eyes were rimmed with red. She'd been crying, and very recently.

Once such things might have been cause for contempt. Now . . . now they just were.

"Well?" His voice was hard, unyielding as stone. "What did you see?"

She didn't answer right away, looking at a point in space somewhere past his shoulder. When she eventually did speak, her voice was quiet but clear. "I saw things that can never be, and things that I can never have. No matter how much I might want them." She looked back at him then, meeting his gaze directly. There was a toughness and determination there. She may have been crying, but she definitely wasn't now.

"And I saw something else. Something that wasn't simply extrapolated from my own desires and wish-fulfilment fantasies." She took a deep breath, doubt showing ever so briefly, before being banished firmly. "I know where we have to go, and we have to move quickly."


	12. Webs Within Webs

**12. Webs Within Webs**

"Hmm. In the light of this latest news, Jedi Bastila's decision to follow her own conscience, unfortunately, begins to look even more regrettable."

"Regrettable?" Jedi Master Mida Tapawan's voice rose to querulous pitch. "I would be tempted to use far stronger terms than that. The consequences of her defiance could end up being disastrous." Pale and colourless, the translucent image of her head and shoulders flickered in the gloom. "If the senate think we are going to renege . . ."

Morrigance arranged the expression on her fake, holographic face into an indulgent smile. "Oh come now, Mida dear. Don't you remember what it's like to be young? All that overwhelming energy and impulsiveness, channelling itself as embarrassingly naïve idealism and conviction. Let's try not to be too harsh here."

Mida Tapawan grumbled something quietly that didn't carry across the comm. link.

"Besides," Morrigance continued in the same light, indulgent tone. "It is ever the way with those who have spent any length of time around Revan, is it not? They develop a rebellious and questioning steak, and no longer feel quite so beholden to their masters. This latest incarnation does not seem so much changed from the old one, at least insofar as the passions he ignites in those around him."

Again, Mida muttered something that didn't fully carry, although the words " . . . ignite him . . ." were definitely in there. "And so decisions taken in desperation and haste inevitably have dire consequences that come home to roost."

Morrigance nodded slowly. "They are roosting now, certainly. Yes, you have made your thoughts on the former Council's previous actions in regard to Revan quite clear. I do not necessarily disagree, but it a decision that has gone from us now." Her holographic face took on a musing look. "As to the matter in hand, and Bastila Shan, might I recommend that you despatch a pair of Jedi to Hoth, to bring about her recall in person? I suspect that she would find it much harder to remain . . . disobedient face to face." She made a waving gesture. "And yes, I am all too aware of how overstretched we all are. But in the current circumstances . . .. You rightly point out the urgency here."

"I will take care of it, Master Corva-Dey." Mida Tapawan sighed, the exhalation freighted with weary tension.

"I told you," she said, gently but firmly. "It's Leandra, please. There are places where formality is entirely appropriate, but a private conversation between friends is not one of them."

"As you say . . . Leandra."

"Now, I'm sorry to break off our discussion so abruptly, but unfortunately other matters call out for my attention. I pray we will get the chance to converse in less strained circumstances soon."

And with that, Morrigance cut the link.

For a moment, she simply sat there, motionless, in a dim curtained-off reading cubicle at the rear of the Jedi Archives on Coruscant. There were, she reflected, useful idiots on both sides of the divide, Sith and Jedi alike. The Jedi ones tended to be more tedious in their sanctimony, but somewhat less egotistically self-regarding.

There was also significantly less chance of spontaneously sprouting an assassin's dagger between her shoulder blades. That, she had to admit, held a certain refreshing quality.

Beyond the reading cubicle, she heard footsteps – soft-soled shoes moving quietly. After a second or so listening, she dismissed them from her mind. They were simply those of a junior Padawan archivist, and their quiet stealth was nothing more sinister than a desire not to disturb the great library's sanctity with unnecessary noise. She turned her attention back to the Jedi Holocron in front of her, carefully resuming her work of teasing out its secrets and then subtly altering them.

_Pale winter sunlight shone down on the __Great__Valley__ of the Dark Lords, a biting wind whistling thinly and carrying traces of grit stirred up from the ongoing excavations. It sent her hair whipping out behind her in streamers, her cheeks and ears having gone all but numb in the long walk down the valley's length._

_She squinted against the brightness. _

_He was standing about a hundred metres ahead of her at the top of a slight rise near the valley's head. As always when in public, he was wearing the full, all-concealing regalia, the long black robes stirring around his body in the wind._

_He didn't look round at her approach, but she knew he was fully aware of her, able to sense his alertness. Even when she stepped up to stand at his side, he did nothing to acknowledge her presence._

_Eventually, she cleared her throat. "I get the impression that Master Uthar is a touch put out by having the start of excavations delayed this morning."_

_There was a hollow answering chuckle. The mask made everything issuing from it sound hollower and deeper, adding a timbre that wasn't entirely human. "I'm sure the esteemed Uthar Wynn will manage to contain his annoyance for the time being."_

_It wasn't just his voice that was different. _The robes and mask are Darth Revan. He is a convenient shell I sometimes don. _The words he'd spoken when she'd taken her first steps towards this position. Back then, she'd thought he was joking. _

_Not now._

_At what point did a persona stop being a persona, and start being the real person? What if it was Darth Revan who enjoyed stepping back and becoming Xavious occasionally, rather than the other way round? The idea made her shudder._

_"I think Uthar knows you're here," she said, voice calm and controlled. "The shutdown order could only have come from yourself or Malak. I suspect the main cause of his being put out is that you didn't stop by and visit."_

_"He'll get over it. He's a Sith Master of high standing. Not someone's senile old granny whose grandchildren have neglected to visit for tea."_

_She simply nodded. All of which was slightly beside the point, and ducking the issue of why this meeting was taking place. "I have the holocron."_

_"Excellent." There was a pause just long enough to make her start to feel uncomfortable. Then, "Did you examine it?"_

_She hesitated. "You didn't instruct me not to. I considered carefully, and decided that it would be better if I determined that the information we wanted was actually on it before bringing it to you."_

_There was another hollow, strangely echoing chuckle. "Not everything is a test, Morrigance. You have graduated well beyond the point where I any longer feel that particular need."_

Then why are we here, in the Valley of the Dark Lords, if not to test me?

"_And does it?"_

_"My Lord?" She blinked, momentarily off guard._

_"Contain the information we want concerning the _Flying Kuat_." A black gloved hand waved in negation. "No, don't answer. We would not be here now if it didn't, would we? Might I take a look?"_

_The holocron was a small cube, ten centimetres along each side. It looked to be constructed from various rectangles of differently shaded, smoky crystal – aesthetically interesting, but not overtly remarkable. She handed it to him._

_He was able to activate it almost instantly. Earlier on, it had taken her close on an hour to get even that far._

_All he did was quickly scan through the indices, occasionally pulling something or other up to look at, seemingly at random, before shutting the whole thing down again. In total, he spent at most two minutes examining it, before handing it back to her._

_She looked at him, somewhat perplexed._

_"You should keep it. I would recommend you study it, but that is down to you."_

_"You would recommend I study it," she repeated._

_"Indeed. Jedi Master Vrook may have become near-terminally hidebound and cautious of late, but as a slightly younger man, he was not without insight and even wisdom. And his personal collection of acquired lore, Jedi and otherwise, is second to none that I know of." He turned to look at her. Or rather, the mask looked at her. It was difficult to imagine anything as mundane as a human face lurking behind it. "How is Master Vrook, by the way?"_

Did I kill him, you mean. _"As of yet, I doubt he's even aware of his precious holocron's absence. Judging from where he kept it, he hadn't looked at it in some time."_

_"Good. I have plenty of weapons at my disposal that can accomplish tasks through bloodshed and violence."_

And is that what I am to you? Another weapon at your disposal?_ "I'm not aware of too many Sith Masters who would advocate the close study of Jedi texts."_

_"Then they are idiots." He paused tilting his head in a manner that suggested he was listening to something on the wind. "There is no ignorance, there is knowledge."_

_"Part of the Jedi Code," she noted neutrally._

_"And part of it that holds true, regardless of its source. Even if the Jedi are too blind and steeped in hypocrisy to pay their own commandment more than lip service." After a period of silence, he added, surprisingly light and causal, "Have you heard the proverb of the six blind men and the Ortuga?"_

_The wind chose that moment to gust, whistling to particularly shrill intensity and forcing her to flinch aside from the dust and grit it carried. "I'm not even sure what an Ortuga is," she said dryly._

_Another hollow laugh. "Which somewhat militates against the usefulness of the proverb." He continued after a second or so, nevertheless. "An Ortuga is a creature from the homeworld of the Ortolans – an ancestor species they say. It is a large herbivorous species, with large tusks, thick, pillar-like legs, a very long and prominent proboscis, and big, vaguely fan-shaped ears. The point of the proverb being that each of the six blind men was asked to feel a different portion of the Ortuga, and each, in isolation identified the beast as a totally different thing. A rope, a snake, a spear, a fan, a wall, a tree-trunk. If they had combined their knowledge, they might have pieced together their partial view to identify the whole creature, but they didn't, each one stubbornly clinging to their own isolated perspective."_

_"Interesting."_

_"You don't have to humour me, Morrigance. My ego has not yet become quite so fragile that I need pretty girls simpering in agreement."_

_"Humouring the boss is always a good survival mechanism, I've found." Especially one so dangerous and difficult to predict as he was_._ "You're saying that the Jedi and Sith are like two of the blind men."_

_"Each clinging onto an ear of the elephant and stubbornly insisting they see the whole picture." He shook his head slowly. "Darkside and lightside. They are both parts of the same thing. Two sides of a coin, I've heard said, but that is not right. Rather, tiny extremities of a vastly greater whole, which is neither one nor the other. Claiming to know the will of the force when all either side listens to and perceives are tiny polar extremes. Fools, equally."_

_"And you know better? You're able to see the whole of the beast they are blind to?" She kept her tone very carefully neutral. Something about the conversation was disquieting her intensely._

_He turned to look at her again. If he was intimidating without the mask and robes, then in them he was something altogether different entirely. Particularly in this place of all places. _Dark lord indeed.

_Finally, he inclined his head. An acknowledgement, she thought, struggling not to let out a pent up breath of relief._

_"Perhaps I am just a third blind man. But if I am, I'm at least a blind man who allows himself to perceive and encompass both of their viewpoints, and acknowledge there is something more."_

_The disquiet redoubled, the intensity she felt from him making something inside her squirm. _

_Then, to her profound relief, his gaze moved on from her. He pointed to each of the four corners of the valley in turn. "Naga Sadow, Marka Ragnos, Tulak Hord. And there, still being excavated, Ajunta Pall. There are other tombs, all along the walls, but those are the four most prominent, and the only ones to which we've cleared access. Naga Sadow's contains the Rakatan star map, and is currently sealed. But you should visit the others before Uthar resumes his digging. Taken together with what's on the holocron, I think you'll find it . . . interesting."_

_Abruptly, he started to walk past her, back down the valley. The conversation was over._

_It was thought more than anything, floating just beneath the surface. Somehow, he seemed to reach down, past her defences and startle her into speaking. "And in the future, will there one day be a Tomb of Xavious Revan, standing alongside these others?"_

_His laughter this time was loud and boisterous, seemingly good humoured. "I think, by the time I have finished, both sides will wish to disown me equally."_

The quiet beeping of her personal communicator dragged her attention back to the present. The holocron sat on the desk in front of, barely touched. For a few seconds, she let the communicator carry on beeping as she regathered her thoughts.

"Yes, what is it?"

It was one of her agents. One who would not contact her like this in normal circumstances. "My apologies . . ."

"Don't apologise. Tell me what I need to know."

"It's Senator Walder."

She recognised the name. One of those she'd been watching. One of _them_. A tiny frissance of excitement tickled her. It didn't show in the holographic face she still had switched on. "And?"

"He wants you get in touch with him at the first available opportunity. 'To discuss a matter of the utmost delicacy and urgency,' was how he put it."

"And he came through you in order to demonstrate how much he knows about us, and how much he is in control of the situation." The words held a dry, sardonic slant. "He left a number, of course."

"Of course."

She memorised it.

"He also stated that he hoped you would address the matter with some haste, in order to ensure 'regrettable complications' didn't develop."

Morrigance recognised a threat when she heard it – even a mealy mouthed and oblique one. She severed the communication link.

-s-s-

Consciousness returned slowly. Carth gradually became aware that someone was leaning over him, saying his name, but it was difficult to stir himself into any kind of action. All he really wanted to do was drift off and let the world float away again. So much easier that way . . .

"Damn it, Carth. Don't do this to me."

Abruptly, something incredibly bright was being shone directly into his eyes from close range, and he was yanked, metaphorically kicking and screaming, back to reality. His face twisted hard to one side, and he raised a hand in a vain attempt to block out the glare. "Get that bloody thing out of my face, Witnik." He added a few choice oaths for good measure.

"Ah, so sleeping beauty finally awakens."

Carth forced himself to sit up, grimacing. His head was thumping steadily and his mouth tasted how he imagined the inside of the ship's head might. He hadn't been properly hung over in a long time. Not since he'd given up trying to finding oblivion in a bottle following Morgana's death, when he'd realised it was making the memories worse, not better. This was pretty much the sensation he remembered though. Stifling a groan, he fumbled for the water bottle beside the bed.

Then he realised that Witnik had called him Carth. He squinted at the Sullustan sourly. "I thought I told you not to call me that. I can't afford Yolanda finding out . . ."

"You don't have to worry about Yolanda overhearing just now."

Carth was about to emphasise the point more emphatically, when he noted the tilt of Witnik's ears. Something was up. He extended his senses out further and quickly concluded that they'd landed somewhere. The gravity he felt was real, planetary rather than the subtle unevenness of the ship's own artificially generated pull. And everything was quiet. Quieter than if they'd been running, even on minimal power.

"What happened?" The sinking feeling was rapidly overriding the headache.

"She's gone."

"Yolanda?"

"Wow, you're quick today. The rest's done you good, I see." There was an exasperated note to Witnik's voice.

Carth closed his eyes, wincing. At least the Catcher hadn't caught up with them, so it wasn't quite a worst-case scenario. "Just the facts will do for the moment, if it's all the same."

"Fine." The Sullustan made a sniffing noise. "She broke into your locker and took your gun. Then she broke into my workshop and took the box. Then she walked out."

"And you let her?" Carth flinched as soon as the words were out, realising how they sounded.

"After she got your gun? Too damn right I let her."

"Sorry, sorry. That was uncalled for." He shook his head. It was himself he was mad at. He should have seen this coming, but with the Catcher so prominent in his thoughts – in every single respect – he'd stopped thinking of Yolanda as a potential threat in her own right. "Sorry I dragged you into this crap. Damn it, I thought she'd . . ." Another headshake and he trailed off. Done was done. "How long ago?"

"Twenty minutes. You were right about putting yourself way under Carth. I've had a devil of a time getting you to wake up."

He grunted, standing up and managing not to stagger as he made his way over to the sink. There he splashed some water on his face, to little overall effect, before locating his battered old orange jacket and snatching it up. "Where are we?"

Witnik looked wary. "You told me not to tell you that."

"I'd imagine I'm going to find out anyway, as soon as I step off this ship. Besides, I think this is where we part ways." He held up a hand to forestall the protest he knew was coming. "Think about it for a moment, Witnik. Thanks for what you've done. I owe you big time, and I'll try to pay you back when I can. But really. You need to get out of here as soon as you can."

After holding Carth's gaze for several seconds, Witnik finally said, "Fondor. Even if this Catcher 'hears' that right now, you've still got at least a twelve hour start before he can show up in person."

Carth nodded, going through what he knew about Fondor in his head. It wasn't much, all told. "You mentioned that you knew people who might be able to crack that box. Any of them here?" It was a thin hope.

Which rapidly withered away to nothing as Witnik signalled the negative. "You're sure that's what she's going to do? She won't try to put some distance between the two of you first?"

"She risked her life to get hold of it on Berchest. Whatever's in there, it's important. I'm willing to bet opening it is her first priority now." If it wasn't, he had to admit he probably wasn't going to be catching up to her. She was undoubtedly far more adept at evading a pursuit than he would be at mounting one.

"Torval Heida is the local Exchange boss, from what I remember. Least, he was two years ago. If there's anyone here who can do the job, one of his men is your best bet for pointing you in the right direction."

Carth hid his grimace. The Exchange. Not his favourite people in the galaxy, but the saying about beggars and choosers came to mind. "Thanks, Witnik. Now, you're going to promise me: as soon as I'm off the ship, you're asking for an exit lane, firing up, and getting out of here. Right?"

"Right." There was a notable lack of enthusiasm in the Sullustan's voice, but he eventually did give way. "Be careful out there, Carth. When I was coming in to land, I got the impression that Fondor is a bit of mess right now."

-s-s-

Yuthura watched the male Twi'lek closely.

He'd emerged from Seboba the Hutt's personal slave harem. If he was a slave himself, he was a particularly privileged one, richly clothed in dark purple silks and weighed down by more ostentatiously expensive and showy jewellery than the bounds of good taste could ever remotely justify. Strong blue head tails were arranged decorously over his silk-clad shoulders, oiled and glossy. The scents he wore reached her nostrils even from a distance of nearly ten metres away, like his jewellery obviously expensive, but hideously over done.

All he had to do was turn his head slightly to the right and he would see her. Except she was reaching out through the force to ensure that didn't happen, his mind suddenly having absolutely no curiosity at all about anything in this particular direction.

Definitely not a slave, she decided.

Above even his attire, his stance made that clear – arrogant and assured. As she watched, he gestured to a pair of young Hutts who'd apparently managed to get themselves relegated to guard duty, summoning them across to him. Yuthura shrank back further into her hiding place.

The young Hutts were a lot thinner than their elder brethren and fully mobile – chubby pythons rather than obese toad-cum-slugs.

The Twi'lek was clearly the one in command. Young Hutts, Yuthura knew, typically had a status barely higher than that of slaves, open target for the abuses of their elders. Of course, unlike slaves, young Hutt's eventually lived to return the abuses they suffered onto the heads of the next generation once they were old and fat enough.

Seboba's councillor, she inferred from the tone of the conversation. He would be someone of high standing within the Exchange in his own right, responsible for advising Seboba in matters of trade, and ensuring that the Hutt's household was run smoothly. Such positions always went to alien species, simply because Hutts knew that anyone of their own kind given such a position would automatically be plotting treachery.

The fact he was a Twi'lek didn't surprise her. She had encountered his ilk before on Sleheyron. She'd been sold into slavery in the first place by men like him.

Abruptly she came to the decision: to grab him – to use him.

There were probably more Twi'lek females in slavery throughout the galaxy than there were slaves of any other single species. Yet no slavers ever raided Ryloth. Instead, the slave trade had become a home-grown industry, girls – and it was nearly exclusively girls – taken by opportunistic businessmen, purchased or otherwise prised from there families, or in increasing numbers, explicitly bred for the purpose. There they were raised and trained to be perfect pleasure slaves, no longer people but commodities to be bought and sold, purely for the purposes of lining their owners' pockets.

Although technically illegal, it was in reality one of Ryloth's biggest exports, too many in authority willing to be bribed into turning a blind eye.

If there was one aspect of the slave trade that made her blood boil more than the brutally systematic cruelties of the Hutts, it was this: that the problem was self-inflicted, fed by the greed of her own people. Millions suffered horribly, and their brethren not only turned a blind eye, they were complicit in it.

The anger wouldn't fade. Not when confronted with it in such blatant and close proximity. The best she could do was hold it tight, contained beneath the surface.

He dismissed the two Hutts and started walking briskly. She followed, HK-47 a silent shadow at her back.

At the last moment, he apparently sensed her, starting to turn around. Instantly she punched straight through his mental defences, hard and brutal, switching off his reactions for the fraction of a second necessary to grab him and yank him, unresisting through a nearby doorway into the storage room beyond.

As she held him up against a wall, he blinked dazedly. He was obviously struggling to work out what had just happened. His gaze settled on her face, focusing slowly.

In an instant confusion was replaced by cold hauteur. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded in Twi'lecki. His head tails assumed a posture of contemptuous superiority.

She simply held his gaze, unspeaking, baring sharp white teeth.

He tried to break her grip, but although he had at least twenty kilograms of weight advantage and topped her by several centimetres, she was in far superior physical condition to him and held him easily. "Unhand me at once." His tone was still peremptory, but this time she could sense disquiet building. His gaze flicked over her shoulder to HK, obviously unable to reconcile the droid with his initial assumptions of the situation.

Her silence continued, waiting for him to catch on.

"I'm waiting for an explanation, slave."

_And so you damn yourself with your own words._

"You know that I can have the lekku yanked from your head, the skin flayed from your still whimpering flesh, if I so desire it." Barely contained fury rose to a quivering pitch in his voice.

"Look more closely," she suggested quietly. It had been a long time since she'd conversed in her people's own language

He did. His jaw clamped shut. "Your tattoos. They're not . . ."

"They're Sith. This one here, for example, is sometimes known as the Eye of Ragnos. Only a force-adept of ruthlessness and power may wear it."

She watched his face crumble and his head tails wilt. To his credit, he managed to re-impose a veneer of composure with remarkable rapidity. It was distinctly brittle though. "What do you want?"

_To yank the life from your body and watch you suffer, gasping like a landed fish as you die_. The thought was startling in its vehement lucidity. She had to grit her teeth. Fortunately, it looked like a snarl.

_There is no emotion, there is peace_.

Empty mantra. All the peace in the universe did not undo the suffering people like this one had caused – did not make it better, or right. And there clearly was emotion – vast, black, overwhelming tides of it.

_There is emotion, but peace is stronger than that emotion. It allows you to be emotion's master, rather than to be mastered by it_.

Then let it be done without emotion, the inner voice retorted. Let it be done with perfect, icy calm and tranquillity.

_What _do_ you want?_ His question, internally repeated, but with entirely different meaning.

_This?_ She managed to unclamp her jaw slightly, and draw breath. Her grip on him had tightened to the point where she was in danger of strangling him. His eyes were wide, filled with terror and recognition of his own death.

"You're going to take me to Seboba." Her voice was mild. "You're going to get me through all the layers of guards and security systems, and if I sense even the slightest treacherous thought in here . . ." She made another, hard stabbing thrust through his mental defences, so that no mater how force-insensitive he was, he couldn't help but feel it and take the point. ". . . I will switch on every single pain receptor in your body and leave you like that." Entirely beyond her capabilities, but given the reputation of the Sith, he wouldn't know that. "You'll probably only last an hour or two at most, before your heart gives out, but each and every second of that time will seem like its own personal little eternity. Your sanity will be entirely gone, long before the end."

He whetted his lips. "If I take you to Seboba, he'll have me killed."

She smiled and nodded. "Yes, it's a dilemma, isn't it? Seboba can be a thoroughly cruel and ruthless master, can't he? And any action that he might regard as a betrayal . . .. I am _so_ glad I'm not stuck in your position right now."

"Please . . ."

"Are you begging me for mercy?" Her voice was suddenly sub-arctic.

After absorbing the look in her eyes, he shook his head. "I . . . I know who you are. You're Yuthura Ban."

Just for a moment that left her taken aback. She knew all about Seboba, but she would have been willing to bet that she didn't even register in his universe.

But then, she realised, she was famous, wasn't she? Tamar's words from before they'd visited Darth Auza came back. _As far as most of the galaxy is concerned, you're Darth Revan's new apprentice. You helped destroy the Jedi council_. Of course he would know who she was.

When they'd visited Auza, playing on that, she'd been pretending to be a Sith. Now . . . from the anger and hate inside, she wasn't sure she was pretending any more. She suppressed a shudder at the realisation, easing her grip on the Twi'lek just slightly – drawing back.

Was everything that had happened during these past few months meaningless – for nothing?

Harshly, she pushed that doubt away. Now wasn't the time for it.

"Suggestion: Perhaps I could torture this snivelling meatbag for a time?" The eagerness in HK's tone was palpable. "I am most efficient, and I am sure he would be much more cooperative by the time I had finished." There was a pause that had an almost musing quality to it. "Either that, or dead. But that is most unlikely, I assure you."

The Twi'lek's gaze darted past her shoulder.

"This is HK-47," Yuthura noted. "Darth Revan's personal assassin droid. As you can see, it's certainly very . . . enthusiastic. Perhaps the two of you would like to get more closely acquainted?"

Briefly, the Twi'lek's eyes widened. Then he nodded quickly. "I . . . I'll take you to Seboba."

-s-s-

Zaalbar's roar when he laid eyes on Mission was so loud, even after the extended racket of blaster fire and explosions that had preceded it, that it made Tamar wince. Quickly the girl was almost buried beneath a couple of hundred kilos of Wookiee.

"Hey there, Big Zee," she sounded like she was crying. "I was worried about you too. I saw you . . . I . . ." The rest was muffled from Tamar's hearing, before rising again a few seconds later. "Zee, just what have you been doing to your coat?" An exasperated tutting noise. "Gone for five minutes and . . . I hate to be blunt here, but you're a mess. You stink of smoke. I mean _really_ stink of it. And as for the tangles – I think it's going to take weeks to get all of them straightened out . . ."

Zaalbar's mournful sounding protest managed to draw a fractional smile, but it faded quickly. Although everything was quiet for the moment, Tamar knew it would be no more than a temporary respite. Bodies were slumped against the walls like discarded ragdolls and the air stank of cauterised flesh, smoke and the ionised reek of intense blaster fire.

His gaze locked with Juhani's, and they shared a small nod of greeting.

"Trouble seems to have a knack of attaching itself to your coattails," she murmured as the two of them fell into step.

_Something of an understatement there_. "Not through choice, I assure you."

"Still, it does my heart glad to see Mission safe and well. I'd thought . . ." she trailed off, before shaking her head emphatically. "No, that is entirely irrelevant now."

"I have to confess it's something of a surprise to find you here," Tamar murmured. "But definitely a most welcome one. You are well?"

Juhani smiled. Tamar was vaguely, but uncomfortably, aware of Belaya watching them, hawk-like, from off to one side. "After experiencing Jolee's piloting skills on the way in, I don't think there is anything left in this galaxy that can puncture my serenity."

"I heard that, girl."

There was no sign of any more of Seboba's troops, even when he extended his senses deeper into the ship. That didn't do anything to reassure him though, and he still kept his lightsaber poised at the ready. He noted that both Belaya and Juhani did the same. He didn't for a moment believe they'd managed to take all Seboba had to throw at them.

The main question in his mind was whether the Hutt was simply regrouping his forces, ready to renew their onslaught somewhere further ahead, or there was some other – and potentially more deadly – kind of trap waiting for them.

"Not even a hello for the old man, then?"

Tamar glanced at Jolee sidelong. "You know that saying about absence making the heart grow fonder? Complete crap, isn't it."

"Yuthura not with you?" he asked, voice low, as Tamar came alongside him.

"We were separated." Tamar kept his tone flat and business-like, feelings carefully buried. "There was an explosion. The corridor collapsed and we ended up on opposite sides. She's heading for the upper decks, same as we are."

"You're worried about her," he said simply.

He didn't answer right away – kept on leading the advance deeper into the _Rancorous_. "She's just about the most capable and resourceful person I know."

"That wasn't an answer. Now, was it?"

"Maybe not." The lights flickered intermittently, the tangled corridors of the Hutt ship reminding uncomfortably of the bowels of a great beast. "But I learned that from the undisputed master. Didn't I, old man?"

Jolee made a non-committal noise.

"HK's with her, anyway."

"And that makes you more, or less worried does it?"

If he was honest, probably more. They reached the main turbolift juncture for this part of the ship, and Tamar signalled a halt. "Can you sense anyone at all in the vicinity, apart from us?"

After a pause of several seconds, Jolee shook his head. A glance across at Juhani, and she too indicated the negative. Which made the three of them.

The turbolifts were too dangerous, he decided abruptly. Too obvious a place to spring a trap. He stepped past them, igniting his lightsaber and slicing through a service panel in a pair of neat, criss-cross strokes. As the sundered metal fell away, he caught it with his will, lowering it quietly to the floor before it could make a clang. It revealed a dark, narrow shaft with a metal ladder leading up and down, farther in both directions than light permitted the eye to see.

"I wasn't really meaning in a physical sense," Jolee continued, just loud enough for him to hear, not apparently content simply to let the matter drop. "We've had a few conversations recently, Yuthura and I. She told me a thing or two about her past. I'd imagine it must be hard, being confronted with . . . those memories again. No matter what resolutions she thinks she's come to with herself."

Tamar shone a flashlight beam into the service shaft. Even that didn't manage to illuminate the shaft's top, but it did at least reveal other exits, spaced at regular intervals. "Of course I'm worried," he said finally; quietly. He'd been able to feel the tension in her since they got here – the rising turmoil. "But that's not what you're getting at, is it old man? Why don't you just come out and say what you mean? It's me who's got you worried. Is my mind focussed properly on the job?"

He glanced back in time to see Jolee shrug. "Oh, I _am_ concerned about her too. I like her, you know. Would hate to see any harm come to her. She kind of reminds me of . . ." An abrupt cough, and he cut himself off. "Well, you don't want to here me babbling about that just now, do you?"

Tamar didn't say anything. He leant further into the shaft, yanking on one of the rungs to ensure it could take his, and more importantly, Zaalbar's weight. Like everything in the _Rancorous_, it looked rather the worse for wear. "Is there a point here?"

"Well, it's not like you've been going out of the way to keep it secret, is it? I mean, you'd have checked out the soundproofing on your cabin a bit more thoroughly if you were. Thud-thud-thud. Creak-creak-creak. Half the bloody night. Youthful stamina's all very well and good, but did you ever consider that people in the next cabin might be trying to sleep?"

_Okay, deep breath_. Tamar turned around slowly. "What are you all of a sudden? My bloody father or something?"

Jolee winced. "By the force, I hope not. I don't think even I've done anything to deserve a penance quite that harsh."

"I don't think this is the appropriate time for this conversation, do you?" he said at last. "To be honest, I can't think of any time between now and the end of the universe that's a remotely appropriate time for this conversation."

After looking him in the eye, Jolee finally nodded. "So you have everything under control?"

Tamar grunted, exasperation and annoyance together. "Look, I know the score here." His voice was very quiet, but intense. "What's between me and Yuthura . . . it doesn't matter. It changes nothing that matters, and in the scheme of things, no one cares. There're precisely two people in this galaxy it's remotely important to, and on any larger scale than that it's blindingly irrelevant. It won't get in the way. It won't stop me paying attention to what I need to."

"Wow. That's . . . cold. Cynical, I might even be tempted to say."

"So you disagree then?"

Jolee seemed slightly taken aback. After a moment, he shook his head and muttered, almost sub-audible. "And they say romance is dead." Then, more loudly. "It makes you angry though, doesn't it? You think it should matter, even when you tell yourself it doesn't."

"Hey, you guys. Do you think we could get a move on?" Mission's voice came from somewhere behind them. "I can feel myself aging here."

Tamar shot Jolee one last long, level look. "You know, sometimes, I hate you old man." Then, with a gesture, he indicated the service shaft. "Well, like Mission so rightly says, are we going to stand around here all day chatting, or are we going to get a move on? Age before beauty is, I think, traditional."

"Now I'm confused. I've got you beat on both of those, so which is it?" But he stepped past, looking at the ladder somewhat gingerly, before clambering on. "This is all some kind of vicious payback for imagined slights, isn't it?"

"What are you blathering about now?"

"Oh, it's all right for you. You don't have to worry about your joints burning hotter than the surface of Nkllon after a climb like that."

"You're welcome to use the lift if you like. Act as a decoy. Though I can't imagine they'll find your scrawny ass the most attractive bait imaginable . . ."

"You're sure the lift's a trap then?" Juhani asked quietly from by his side. Tamar wondered briefly how much of the conversation she'd overheard. She would be far too polite to say.

"If _I_ had to deal with the problem of a group of Jedi let loose on my ship, cutting through all the men I sent against them with apparent ease, then believe me, it would be a trap."

With a heavy sigh, and grumbling all the way, Jolee began to climb. Tamar got onto the ladder behind him and moved to follow.

A few seconds latter, from somewhere high above, came a series of muffled controlled explosions.

-s-s-

As meetings went, this one certainly had the unusual going for it, even in Morrigance's considerable experience.

It wasn't, of course, a meeting in person.

Senator Walder had been neither stupid, nor overconfident enough to let himself get involved in something like that. Instead, when she'd contacted the number her agent had passed on, she'd been directed to pick up a small package.

The package had turned out to contain a visor, along with instructions that, in order, to open communications, she should go to a secure location and put it on. Over an hour of meticulous scanning had revealed no traces of explosives, toxins, trackers, or devices such as neural disruptors, so – out of curiosity – she had finally done as the instructions suggested.

Immediately she'd found herself, to all appearances, transported from the empty apartment to an entirely different location.

Careful inspection had determined that it was – or appeared to be, at least – a blimp.

Virtually speaking, she was standing in a broad gondola slung underneath it, which appeared to combine the functions of luxurious restaurant, ballroom and viewing platform. The expansive windows and transparisteel floor gave spectacular views of the tops of Coruscant's tallest skyscrapers, poking through the dull grey cloud cover. She could pick out the spires of the massive senate complex in the near distance, including the imposing rotunda of the senate archives. Further away, she could just barely discern the very peak of the grand Jedi temple.

"A spectacular view, is it not?" a smooth, mellow sounding voice intoned from directly behind her. "When I'm feeling particularly jaded I like to come up here and simply stand and watch the world go by. I find it helps restore a measure of my faith in the galaxy at large, and the Republic in particular."

For about a microsecond annoyance flared, before she strangled it back again. Of course she wouldn't have any force sense of her surroundings, since she was there only through the illusion created by the visor. That was the entire point of setting up the meeting like this – something that gave the illusion of face-to-face contact, without putting a non-force user at a disadvantage. "I assume that none of this is real – just computer generated images being fed back to me."

"On the contrary. If you happened to be inside one of the skyscrapers you see below us, then you could look out of your window and see us, high above."

She made a soft, non-committal sound. Turning around, she saw the familiar figure that the Senator presented to the world. A tall, thin gentleman who was the epitome of distinguished refinement, albeit drawn in rather grey and dreary hues – hair, clothing and even strangely colourless skin included.

"And you are personally here, Senator?"

"No more than you are, Lady Fel." If she was supposed to be surprised by the fact that he knew her name, he was in for a disappointment. "The visor you're wearing connects you to the sensory components of a specially constructed droid."

He steered her gaze sideways with a gesture to a mirror behind the bar. There she saw her reflection for the first time – a near featureless, androgynous humanoid construction of what looked like flesh-coloured plastic. It looked oddly naked and vulnerable, the effect only magnified by the impressive opulence of the surroundings.

"You can change the appearance to whatever you wish, within reason. Beneath this surface of perception I'm physically nothing more than an identical droid to you."

Morrigance chose to leave herself as the androgynous mannequin, for all its slight ridiculousness. Transforming into anything else risked inadvertently giving away something about herself that she didn't want to. "So, Senator, is this how the Genoharadan typically conduct their meetings? I suppose it's a useful method for maintaining anonymity between members."

Without any noticeable pause, Senator Walder chuckled. It managed to sound natural and unforced. "You are well informed. From what I have observed of you in recent weeks, I hardly expected less."

She didn't say anything in response to that, so he continued. "In many ways, your knowledge of us makes things easier. It saves time on tedious explanations." His smile had an air of self-satisfaction that she would have loved to strip away.

"So, what is it I can do for the secret rulers of the galaxy?" Her voice held a distinctly acidic edge, which she made no attempt to hide. "I have to say, I feel honoured."

"Please. Those are simply tales told by the credulous and paranoid, with no grain of truth to them." His tone remained light, but there was a fractional tightness about his eyes. He was obviously capable of detecting when he was being mocked. "I would have thought that someone like you would have known better."

"Someone like me?"

"A Sith Lord of power and subtlety. Former spymaster of Darth Revan. Former right hand of the late Drevon Rae."

If she hadn't had a very good idea where that information had come from, she reflected, she might have found it slightly more disturbing. "You've done your homework, I see. Now, I hate to be so blunt and unsubtle, but what do you want?"

Another indulgent chuckle, which this time fell squarely into the realms of the irritating. "We have been watching your activities of late with some fascination, Lady Fel. You've certainly been creating quite the stir."

_Or to translate, you noticed me two weeks ago, when I let you notice me, and have been scrabbling around like headless chickens trying to work out how to respond ever since_. She got the impression that, even compared with dealing with the various Sith factions, this was going to prove circuitous. "Oh?"

"The assassination of the Jedi Council was certainly a bold move, and pinning it on Revan was inspired – if slightly fortuitous, and far from watertight. Your manipulations of the senate and Jedi Order since then have certainly been amusing to watch too – despite their relative crudeness."

She decided that, on reflection, she had no patience for this. "And now of course, I'm treading on your toes; annoyingly disrupting your own intricate and carefully spun schemes, and generally proving myself an inconvenience to the order of things you are so careful to maintain."

The Senator inclined his head with a fractional smile. "Well, since we are being blunt here. Our leaders . . ."

"The Overseers?"

"Our _leaders_, feel you are drawing unwanted attention in our direction, and that – lacking our knowledge of the inner workings of the Republic drawn from long centuries of experience – you are not being nearly so clever and subtle as you think."

"Is that so?" She wondered if any of those leaders realised that the attention she was drawing their way, might be deliberate. A join the dots puzzle, created for the benefit of those who were willing to look beyond the idea that Revan was the source of all that was evil and wrong in the galaxy – and there were a few of those out there even now, some of increasing persistence. The Genoharadan, with all their mystery and mystique, made such ideal culprits.

But no, in the mythology that they'd so painstakingly created, the Genoharadan were the spiders at the centre of the ultimate, underpinning web. They were the master conspirators and manipulators, controlling every action. The very idea would be ludicrous.

"It is." There were no more smiles. "I would recommend you take that concern seriously."

"Indeed. Tell me then, Senator: is this simply to be a cease-and-desist order, or do the people you represent have a more interesting proposal they'd like to make?"

"Well, you have proven yourself a woman of considerable talent, and our organisation is always open to the talented – should the talent be made of the right material."

"Interesting." In the sense of highly predictable.

"Of course, we would need to satisfy ourselves of certain factors before such an offer could be made. I am simply . . . testing the water, you might say."

"And if I were to prove . . . not of the right material? Or even reject your offer entirely? Hypothetically speaking, you understand."

"Hypothetically speaking? Oh, that would be most regrettable. We would have to take steps to ensure the sanctity of our interests."

"And I wouldn't want that, would I?" The sardonic tone was back. Gazing out of the windows, Morrigance noted that they were flying in slow circles. They'd just completed one full loop, right back to where they'd started.

"No you wouldn't." That was icy cold. If she'd possessed the wherewithal to smile, she would have then. "The first thing we would like to know, as a sign of good faith before we commence negotiations, is this: What is your endgame?"

"I thought," she murmured, "That you would have already figured that out."

"It is best to hear such things in your own words. To avoid misunderstandings, and establish honesty in our dealings."

She nodded. In the mirror, she saw her droid body mimic the nod exactly. "There remains a problem."

"Oh? I thought everything we'd discussed up to this point had been quite straightforward."

"The problem I have is with you."

"Me?" Senator Walder raised an eyebrow.

"Not you personally, Senator. The people you represent. When I called you the 'secret rulers of the galaxy' earlier, and you disparaged the idea, you weren't being entirely honest, were you? That is how you think of yourselves in your heart of hearts. Nothing happens in the Republic that you don't permit. No legislation passes that you don't vet. No one becomes Chancellor who you don't allow. You have fingers in every pie, and hold threads in every web. Galactic trade is yours, and a thousand thousand bounty hunters and assassins enforce your will without ever knowing who they work for. Let the Sith and the Jedi and the Mandalorians have their petty galactic wars. The turmoil makes it all the easier for you to run your manipulations and turn your profits, playing every side against the other. Let the likes of Darth Revan have their vast fleets and Starforges. They don't hold a candle to the true power that you wield, all in secret and unnoticed."

He chuckled indulgently. "Now, I would hardly go that far . . ."

"That _is_ what you think of yourselves, though," she continued over the top of him. "Isn't it? Except, in reality, things hit one small snag."

His eyes seemed to glitter – venomous. The look was oddly familiar, despite the vastly different face. _So it is you._

"Namely, it's all a fantasy, inflated by the idiotic rantings of crazed conspiracy theorists and your own self-aggrandisement. You pull your strings and indulge your petty greed and vices, but the only reason you can delude yourself into thinking that you're in control is that you don't use your so called 'power' to change anything of significance in the slightest. You're the system in microcosm, believing you're all important, but altering nothing. You're invisible to the galaxy not because of your cleverness, but because you simply do not matter. No one notices you because there is nothing to notice, and everything that happens would happen the way it does whether you existed or not."

She shook her head disparagingly. The droid shook its head in turn. "If every one of you disappeared tonight, the Republic and the galaxy at large wouldn't be changed one iota come the morning. You're all ghosts in the machine, with the emphasis on ghosts." A pause. "And I'd sooner slice my own face off than ally myself with such a pathetic group of self-deluded and irrelevant losers."

Silence dragged. The Senator seemed to be so stunned by her outburst that he'd temporarily lost his voice.

"You really are an incredibly stupid woman, aren't you?" he finally managed.

A shrug. It was strangely fascinating watching her mannequin-self exactly duplicate her gestures. "If you truly represented the will of the Genoharadan as a whole, then yes, I agree, it would fairly stupid of me to antagonise you so casually, simply for the sake of indulging my ego. But the thing is, you don't."

He stopped, staring at her as if trying to read her, but a blankly expressionless droid could give nothing away. "What are you babbling about, woman?"

"An agent of mine has been following Senator Walder for some time now, and here's the thing: he's just a front. A slightly senile old man, who should have been retired a long time ago. Nowadays he's mainly in it for the free lunches. I'm sure he'd be astonished to find out some of the things his name gets put too." Another shrug. "The perfect tool in many respects."

"Now, see here . . ."

She fixed the image of Senator Walder with a long, penetrating look, making him stumble to a halt. "So, Hulas, my old friend. How are things? It's been a long time, hasn't it? Stabbed anyone interesting in the back recently?"

After a couple of heartbeats he vanished, leaving another plain, androgynous-looking droid exactly like herself standing in front of her.

Mission accomplished, she thought dryly. The Rodian worm would now be drawn into moving against her directly, both out of cowardice, and to assuage the bruising that his ego had taken.

She took the visor off.

Knowing Hulas as she did, he would respond predictably.

-s-s-

Witnik had been right about there being 'a bit of a mess' on Fondor right now. In fact, the Sullustan had probably understated by a fair margin.

Carth ducked into another side street to avoid the mass of chanting protesters marching in the opposite direction, watching from the shadows as they passed. He could feel his heart thudding, a tight band of tension seeming to have locked in place around his chest.

There was a general strike on, entering its third day, and the planet had pretty much ground to a standstill.

All of the capital city's transport systems were shut down, and the streets were clogged with demonstrators. He'd been forced to navigate his way from the spaceport on foot, which in a city this size was far from ideal, and it had taken him a disconcertingly long time. Each passing moment increased his nervousness and wound the tension a little bit tighter, the twelve or so hours guaranteed start he had on the Catcher shrinking with worrying rapidity.

The various vid screens he'd seen around the streets all displayed the same thing. Fondor's main parliament buildings under siege by the crowds; clashes with police; bloodied rioters hurling plastocrete bricks. As yet, he'd managed to avoid being caught directly in the worst of it.

It was all about the proposed new orbital shipyards that were set to transform the system from a relative backwater into the most strategically important location in the colonies. After the destruction of the ship yards at Isodor by a Sith strike force led by Saul Karath, the Republic had been desperately short of shipping capacity, and the Fondorian government had seen the opportunity to boost an otherwise ailing economy.

Opposition groups had been rather less enthusiastic with the scheme; accusing the government of painting a massive target on Fondor's back. Given the tactics adopted by the Mandalore, then Revan and finally Saul, and the amount that systems containing major military shipyards had suffered during the recent wars, it had been easy enough to whip up hysteria. The Republic Senate's ill-timed proposal to site a new military base alongside the shipyards had only gone to inflame matters further.

The arrival of a delegation from Kuat, to advise on the construction process, had been the final spark to ignite the whole mess into the current conflagration.

At least the Exchange hadn't downed tools in sympathy with the rest of the planet's workforce. Conscientious citizens that they were. It was too dark a thought to be particularly humorous.

He found the place he was looking for about ten minutes later, down another side street. Ostensibly, it was a droid repair shop, and there was no hint that it was open from the outside. The door, however, swung open easily when he tried it.

Picking his way through the dingy, barely lit interior between shelves full of assorted parts, he found the proprietor in the back room – a Verpine, as he'd been told to expect. The insectoid didn't turn round at his approach, bent over the detached head of a droid and fiddling with something inside its cranium. Carth cleared his throat.

"Can I help you sir?" The precise, ever so slightly prissy voice made him jolt, until he realised it originated from a protocol droid standing in the shadows. He'd walked right past it, taking it to be inactive.

"I'm looking for a woman." Carth watched the droid very closely. Probably just paranoia, drawn from his acquaintance with HK-47, but better to be safe than sorry. It translated his words into a series of rapid clicks – the Verpine language, of which he didn't understand a word.

The Verpine looked up at him, peering at him for a moment with its multi-faceted eyes, before letting loose a rapid-fire series of hissing clicks in answer. Then it returned its attention to its work.

"I'm sorry sir, but we don't sell women."

More clicking came from the Verpine. "Although my master says that he can make a fully functional woman droid to your exact specifications. It will take approximately three months and cost five-hundred thousand credits."

Carth blinked. "I'm not looking to purchase a woman!" He took a deep breath, and then added. "The woman I'm looking for is one of your customers. You'll remember her. She came in about two hours ago with a combination-locked box she wanted you to open."

The droid translated that into more clicking, and got a series of rapid-fire clicks in immediate answer.

"My master does not, under any circumstances, violate the confidentiality of his clients." The droid managed to sound sniffily offended.

Carth sighed wearily. "I can pay for the information."

"The master does not respond to bribes."

"No? Well perhaps you'd like to ask him, all the same." He shot the protocol droid a glare that was supposed to be intimidating. It singularly failed to intimidate.

The Verpine looked up again, antennae tilted at an angle that Carth suspected indicated annoyance. The tone of its clicking tended to reinforce the suggestion.

"My master suggests that, unless there is something you wish to purchase, you should leave. He is finding your presence a distraction."

"So it's like that, is it?" Carth let loose another sigh. "I don't suppose there's anything I can do to change your master's mind?"

"No."

Reluctantly he reached for the holster hidden underneath his jacket. The blaster pistol it held was unfamiliar in his grasp, bearing none of the intimately familiar scratches and dents and wear of his old pistol. "Why does everyone insist on doing things the hard way?"

-s-s-

"What is the meaning of this, Voonlar? Did I summon you into my great presence? I do not recall doing so."

The voice, deep and guttural, almost stentorian, spoke booming Huttese – a language Yuthura was all too familiar with. The Hutt it belonged to was an absolute monster – one of the largest she'd ever seen. It sat, reclining on a floating repulsor sled, and somehow managed to seem powerful and vigorous rather than grotesquely obese, despite its enormous girth. Its leathery hide had been recently oiled to help keep it from drying out, glistening obscenely.

"I . . ."

"Run away," she told the blue-skinned Twi'lek. "Don't stop running."

Voonlar's mouth snapped shut, and for a moment, he appeared to be in danger of choking as he struggled to get words past lips that refused to cooperate. There was a desperate, pleading look in his eyes as he gazed at his master, silently begging for either understanding or forgiveness.

Neither was likely to be forthcoming.

Then he did as he was told, the force compulsion implanted in his head becoming too strong to resist. He launched into a stumbling run, almost tripping over himself in his haste.

Once the doors to Seboba's chambers had whispered shut behind his rapidly departing back, booming laughter echoed, resoundingly loud. "Most amusing. I have not seen Voonlar so terrified in a long time, Yuthura Ban. My congratulations to you." Abruptly, all sense of amusement faded from the voice. "Of course, now I must have him killed for appearance's sake and find myself a new councillor." A noise that might have been a sigh, but sounded like the wheezing of a pair of gigantic bellows. "It is not easy to find good people these days."

Yuthura hid a grimace. "You know who I am, then?" She could speak Huttese fluently, but stuck deliberately to galactic basic. Hutt ears tended to find languages other than their own offensive. She was quite content to be offensive.

Beside Seboba stood a huge glass aquarium, filled with vaguely squid-like Klatooinian paddy-frogs. They were considered a delicacy among Hutts, typically swallowed alive. The way they squirmed as they passed down the gullet was apparently meant to be pleasurable.

At the bottom of the repulsor sled, crouched a pair of slave girls. One was a very beautiful and delicate looking red-orange Twi'lek girl. She looked to be no older than Mission Vao, her eyes downcast, as appropriate for a slave. A delicate gold ankle chain connected her to her master. The second was a lithe and elegant Togruta. Her terracotta coloured skin – raw and bleeding in places – showed signs of recent heavy punishment. Dim embers of defiance smouldered in her eyes, which looked at Yuthura with a curiosity she couldn't quite hide, suggested she was a relatively recent prize, captured rather than bred – Seboba showing off his latest acquisition.

Abruptly more laughter boomed. "Know who you are? I would hope so; given all the trouble I've gone through to get you here."

"To get _me_ here?" Yuthura felt a surge of shock that stopped her in her tracks.

In an effort to cover up her sudden loss of composure, she reached out and used the force to snap the chains holding the two slaves. Thin, and made from gold, their hold was primarily symbolic. They came apart easily. "Get out of here. Find somewhere to lay low. Go, now."

The Togruta didn't need a second invitation, sprinting for the doors that Voonlar had departed through a few moments earlier. The Twi'lek girl, though, merely scampered a few yards to the cover of one of the exotic plants decorating the chamber, crouching there and trembling, obviously terrified by the entire situation.

"You didn't think I was doing this for Revan, did you?" Seboba seemed amused by the notion.

She shrugged. With virtually the whole galaxy looking for Revan one way or another, it had seemed a safe enough assumption. "Well the bounty _is_ impressively large. And I've never encountered a Hutt who was capable of ignoring the chance to make that much money."

"Considering the risks – and likely costs attached – the amount of money is not so large as it at first appears. Besides, I already possess so much wealth that my palate has become somewhat jaded to it – shaming though that admission is for one such as me. No, nowadays I must look to other forms of . . . stimulation."

"And you hope to find that other form of stimulation in me?" Her eyes were hard. The hate and rage was a coldly burning centre – strangely comforting, like an old, familiar friend. It was too easy to embrace, and right now, it didn't seem that wrong at all.

"I saw you dance once, when you were the possession of Omeesh."

"I know."

"I have to admit, I was enthralled. Over the years, I have watched many thousands of slaves dance, but I would still count you as being among the ten best I have seen. At the time, I have to admit I was jealous that my worthless cousin could own such as you, so had to feign indifference to your display."

"Omeesh was your cousin?" She kept her voice neutral, though inwardly she felt a second dose of shock. Seboba's display of indifference those years ago had earned all of Omeesh's slaves harsh punishment. Several of the weaker ones had died because of it.

"A very _distant_ cousin," Seboba emphasised. "Practically none of that unlamented fool's blood pollutes my mighty veins."

"And what? You want me to dance for you again?" She nodded downwards, prompting Seboba's virulent yellow gaze towards the lightsaber she held. "I don't dance any more. Not the way you mean." What was holding her back from using it – from dissecting this vile, corpulent slug into pieces – she wasn't quite sure.

The knowledge she would be stepping back across a line, everything that had happened since Korriban discarded? Perhaps that line had already been crossed. Was any of that important? She had made other promises too, far further back. That _things_ like this would not be permitted to exist.

"A pity. If you possess a truly special gift, I think the only crime there is, is failing to make use of it." The Hutt's eyes blinked slowly as they looked at her, reminding her of a gigantic, malevolent lizard. "But, no. I do not wish you to dance for me. My little Nebri here, who you seem to have frightened so terribly, is already as skilled as you ever were. And she has not yet reached the peak of her abilities."

"So what _do_ you want from me?"

Seboba chortled, seeming almost gleeful. "Why? Can't you guess, Yuthura Ban? I want to kill you. Slowly and at great length as I drink pleasure from every moment of your suffering."

Yuthura's lightsaber ignited with a quiet _snap-hiss_, shining incandescent purple. Seboba managed to look even uglier in its glare. "Really?"

"I also want to thank you."

"You want to thank me?"

"When you opened Omeesh's throat, you removed a major obstacle in my path to assuming control of our clan's household. And that in turn gave me the wherewithal to assassinate Bochaba and Jaranga, taking their seats in the Exchange. Without your intervention, my inevitable ascent would have been . . . rather more arduous than it was."

"Don't mention it." She hissed through her teeth, head tails writhing.

"Alas, family honour is at stake here, for all my gratitude. That one as prominent as Omeesh could be murdered by his own slave, and worse, that this slave still walks and breathes, unpunished, is an intolerable stain of embarrassment upon the name of our clan. A stain I vowed long ago to cleanse. The manner of your demise must send a message to all."

"Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I can see one slight obstacle in the way of your ambition."

More laughter, which made him resemble an over-puffed bullfrog. "A Jedi would not cut even one such as me down in cold blood. That is your weakness."

"But I am not a Jedi."

"You have spent most of these prior eight months studying among the Jedi on Dantooine. You may not officially be of there number, but I know that you were about to be accepted back. That you renounced the Sith and devoted yourself to their pathetic codes, seeking forgiveness and atonement. I considered moving for you then immediately, as soon as I knew you were beyond the protective bounds of Korriban, but I am capable of patience, and knew that a more suitable opening would present itself. Those interfering wizards can prove annoyingly nosey and persistent when stirred."

She bared her teeth. "Then it seems you have misjudged me."

_So what are you? What do you want?_

"Put down the lightsaber and surrender to me."

"Senility is such a sad thing to witness." She tried to sound mocking and contemptuous. The conversation had gone on far too long. _Why are you suddenly so indecisive?_

"Otherwise, your companions will be killed."

"I'd like to see you try." She stepped forward, lightsaber poised. "I have a counter offer. Surrender control of this ship into my command, and maybe I won't slice you apart, piece by blubbery piece."

"You heard and felt the explosions earlier on, did you not?" He didn't seem in the least bit concerned – someone who knew he held all the cards.

She had. And had promptly dismissed them as something of Tamar's doing, not willing to let herself be distracted from her goal.

"Those explosions isolated specific portions of four separate decks, trapping your companions and halting their advance. At my command, or if any harm comes to me, those areas will be exposed to vacuum and the fatal radiation of the Maw."

She felt something icy grip her heart. "You seem to be putting an awful lot of faith in the compassion of a former Sith."

Inwardly she was berating herself for an idiot, struggling to make herself concentrate hard enough to reach Tamar.

_Here_. His thoughts touched with hers, distracted and filled with urgency.

_You need to find environment suits. Now._

_Already working on it._ Then, after a pause. _We need some more time_.

_Will do_.

The contact broke off, difficult to maintain for long amid so much external distraction. But apparently, even that much had been too long, diverting her attention from her surroundings for crucial fractions of a second. She had the fleeting impression of something moving rapidly towards her, and managed to half twist away as a polished metal bowl, used for serving paddy-frogs, descended towards her skull.

Even so, the impact was enough to drop her to her knees, her vision fading through red and black as she struggled to cling to consciousness. She tried to get her legs back under her, but they seemed to have turned to rubber.

Earlier she'd ordered HK to remain behind and guard the lift leading up to Seboba's private quarters. If she'd been thinking more clearly, she would have realised that Seboba would have already summoned his bodyguard to him, and questioned their absence from this chamber more closely.

Dimly she was aware of hidden compartments in the chamber's walls springing open, spilling armed guards who moved rapidly to surround her. She gripped the hilt of her lightsaber more tightly.

And she heard Seboba chuckling again, a bass coughing-croak. "Thank you, dear Nebri. My favourite of favourites. You will be rewarded well."

_Passion leads to brainless stupidity_. Why wasn't that part of the damned Jedi code?

-s-s-

The assassins came faster and more emphatically than even Morrigance had anticipated. She had to give Hulas that much. The Rodian had obviously only ever intended to use the Genoharadan's offer as a mechanism to draw her far enough into the open to strike at her, and no matter whether she accepted or not.

He'd chosen the nature of the assassins wisely too.

A squad of Iridorian berserkers, high on stims and battle frenzy, their minds impenetrable balls of spikes and thorns and insane bloodlust, blocking out all her attempts to sway or divert them from their purpose so she could simply slip away. There was nothing subtle about their approach. Nothing stealthy.

But then, she reflected sourly, quickening her pace, there was scarcely any need for them to be.

She felt their coming long before she actually saw them, walking silently through a deserted speeder parking lot. They announced their arrival with a hail of thermal detonators.

If she'd been less alert, the initial thunderous detonations, throwing parked speeders through the air like toys, might have been the end of it, despite the advance warning. As it was, she was already force-leaping clear while the grenades were in the air, able to duck into the cover of a thick plastocrete pillar and shield herself from the searing waves of heat and semi-molten shrapnel.

That heat was ferocious, the garage's sprinkler system coming on in a rushing deluge, filling the air around her with clouds of steam to mix with the choking smoke.

Through the silvery, vision-obscuring sheets of falling water she glimpsed dark figures darting forward, clad in heavily modified armour – jet black instead of the Iridorians' usual bold golds or reds – manoeuvring to try to outflank her position. Instantly she pulled a drone from her robes and tossed it into the air, whining and spiting blaster-fire like a demented Catherine wheel.

An entire storm of answering fire came back, tightly concentrated and accurate, obliterating the drone's shields, then its casing, dropping it – sparking and in fragments – to the ground. Still, it had done its job, providing the distraction she needed to slip out of the fast tightening circle and away, through the cascading water and clouds of steam to the next available bit of cover.

As she crouched on her haunches, her teeth were clenched behind the concealment of her blank metal mask. _Run, Sith Lord, run. See the Sith Lord run._ She darted forward again as they rapidly closed in on her, a hail of blaster shots raising lines of plastocrete shrapnel behind her heels or spattering off her personal shields, remorselessly stripping them away.

Once in cover again, she glided slowly, silently forward, listening to the falling water, listening to the sounds of their armoured footsteps – heavy and remorseless. One of them began to chant – low, guttural syllables of a language she didn't know. Some kind of battle hymn.

One by one, the others took up the chant, until it rang through the parking lot – harsh and echoing; elementally intense; terrifying.

At first Morrigance thought they were making a stupid error, giving away there respective positions and covering the sound of her own movements with the racket they were making. Then she realised differently.

As the initial rush of stims and berserker fury faded, the hymn gave their minds focus and strength, building a wall of ferocious concentration, through which the mental assaults of a force-adept could not easily penetrate. They had, she knew with abrupt certainty, done this many, many times before – whether hunting down Jedi or Sith, or more probably both.

Her gaze focused on one of them in particular. He was walking through a shallow puddle. Immediately she lashed out.

Lightning arced from her black-gloved hand, striking the water he walked through and crackling viciously up through him. The charge was enough to drop an adult rancor.

And when the lightning faded he was still standing – still walking forward, completely unaffected.

_Modified armour_. Oh yes, they'd definitely done this before.

Another hail of blaster shots homed in on her position, and she felt her shields wither away to nothing. Her breath was coming quickly. _Oh, well done Hulas, you slimy bastard of a worm_.

She almost couldn't believe it. She'd underestimated the Rodian – thought she could deal peremptorily with anything he might be able to throw at her. But like her, he'd apparently learnt a few new tricks since they'd both worked for Drevon Rae. And now, it was beginning to look like she was actually in serious danger of losing.

_No, not like this._ The thought was grim, concentration drawing into tight focus, blotting all distraction out.

The battle hymn renewed in ferocity, her attempts to distract and confuse sliding off ineffectually. If she concentrated solely on one of them, she might have been able to puncture his defences, but in the time and effort it took her, the others would be too close. She gave up on the attempt.

Instead, she picked up burning fragments of smashed speeder, hurling them about in fury, creating a wall of flying fragments and debris. Blaster fire augmented the chaos. More thermal detonators were hurled her way, making the entire building around them shake in time to the searing incandescence of their flashing explosions.

They drove her before them, and she was forced to yield ground, given no time to gain a proper footing – no time to strike back. One went down, pinned but not killed, as she flipped a speeder on top of him, but the other five just drew tighter.

She was forced to her ignite her lightsaber as one of them charged at her full on, vibroblades whirring angrily. Her initial lunge went straight through his defences, but the speed that he rushed her meant she was slightly off balance and only took him through the side instead of the chest. He didn't seem to feel the injury, and didn't slow in the slightest, driving her back behind a near-insane whirlwind of blows that kept her defences fully occupied.

She sensed the others rushing at her, hard and fast, moving to cut her off and finish her, a hunting pack working in flawless coordination. Desperately, she disengaged, force leaping backwards, before turning and running again, blaster fire chewing up the ground behind her and scorching her trailing robes.

Then she was crouching down behind another row of speeders, a brief instant of respite gained, listening to the Iridorians footsteps as they renewed their remorseless advance.

_If you're losing the battle, fight a different one_. Hate flared, white-hot. Galling really, for it to be _his_ words that helped her.

She redirected her will, outside of the parking lot. Outside of the building completely.

Passing vehicles were slowing down and rubbernecking at the flashes from the explosions inside. Picking one – the largest and heaviest, in this case a delivery truck weighed down with a full load – she grabbed the mind of the gawping driver, sweeping aside his mental defences and violently usurping control. Yanking round on the controls and stamping down on the accelerator, she sent him speeding directly towards them, gaining speed and fearsome momentum by the millisecond.

The Iridorians didn't sense the truck coming. In the last few seconds before impact, Morrigance darted from her cover and sprinted hard, the force enhancing the speed of her movements, decreasing air resistance and augmenting muscle power.

The truck hit with stunning force. One entire side of the building seemed almost to ripple with the power of the impact, before belatedly, the disintegrating truck's fuel core erupted.

The Iridorians had barely started to turn around when the leading edge of a huge fireball rolled over them. Morrigance could feel the rush of heat at her back and flung herself forward, full length . . . diving straight out of the other side of the building and into the Coruscant night.

As she fell, cool air rushing past her, her mind was calm. A few seconds later the micro-parachutes beneath her robe auto-deployed, bringing her descent under control.

Minutes later, she was walking unhurriedly through a rooftop park, brilliantly lit skyscrapers rising up on either side. No one around her gave her a second glance. No one even consciously registered her presence among them.

She activated her communicator. "Did you get him?" she asked, no preamble.

There was a miniscule delay before a response came. "No." Then, in explanation. "He decoyed us. A droid containing cloned tissue that fooled our trackers."

"It doesn't matter."

And strangely, it didn't. In fact, for the moment at least, she was almost amused. Although she recognised the amusement was scarcely rational.

"You have a call," the voice added, obviously surprised to have escaped rebuke. "They insisted on waiting."

"Who?"

The voice told her.

"Put them through."

-s-s-

_Don't eavesdrop unless you're prepared to hear something about yourself you don't like_. Carth vaguely remembered that his mother had once told him that, though it was so long ago that he struggled to remember the context.

It seemed appropriate given the circumstances.

Eventually, he'd managed to track Yolanda down to an old tenement block located in an area of the city that trod uncomfortably close to the borders of being a slum. Now he was standing in a bare hallway, listening at the door of an apartment and feeling vaguely uncomfortable and embarrassed by the whole process.

The listening device he was using was able to pick up and amplify the sounds from inside just enough so that he could faintly hear Yolanda's voice. She was in conversation with someone, probably over a comm. link to judge from the context and the fact that he could only hear her half of the conversation.

". . . my apologies," she was saying. "I couldn't get hold of a sample. Jerstyl was acutely paranoid on this. Even I was kept completely out of the loop, and after his death all his labs and offices were locked down so fast and hard I was lucky to get even this much."

A short pause.

"No, the lock box was Jerstyl's. I had the mercenaries snatch it for me while I was occupied with evading Sith operatives. Needs must. I very much doubt they had either the time, or the wherewithal to open it and reseal it again without tripping the security mechanisms, or leaving obvious signs of tampering."

The pause was longer this time.

"Well, not having the Catcher breathing down my neck would be nice. I don't suppose . . ."

Her voice cut of abruptly, before resuming a second or so later.

"Ah, just a thought. Actually, it was slightly strange."

Carth attempted to fill in the other half of the conversation inside his head, based on the length of the gaps, and Yolanda's responses: _What was?_

"This Valdan Mayer character I mentioned. The Catcher became much more interested in him than me once he managed to blunder his way into the middle of things. The problem is, I can't work out why. As a spy, he's no more than borderline competent. Transferred from another branch of Republic military fairly recently would be my guess. He still has that bearing. Could become good with more experience, but at the moment . . . well, to be honest, I struggle to see much that's interesting about him. Certainly not from the Catcher's point of view."

_Not interesting, huh?_ For some reason that rankled slightly. He shoved the thought away in annoyance, trying to concentrate on what was being said.

". . . I think he might have been a pilot once."

_Why's that_, Carth supplied.

"It's his whole bearing on board ship. He stops looking vaguely like a fish out of water for one thing."

_Well, thanks_.

"I included a holo-scan of him in with the data package I sent you. Maybe running it against Republic fleet personnel records for the past ten years or so might turn something up. He's wearing facial prosthetics, I think, but interpolative matching should help in getting round that."

Carth swore beneath his breath. Much too close for comfort. At that moment, he would have happily given up various body parts to find out just who, exactly, she was talking to.

". . . any further orders?" he caught her saying.

There was a long pause that he couldn't hope to fill in.

"Fine," Yolanda eventually said. From her decidedly unenthusiastic tone, whatever had been said had not been well received on her part. "I'll get on it and report back via the usual channels."

That was followed by silence. Carth was just realising that the conversation was over when someone called out from the far end of the corridor: "Hey, you there. What are you doing?"

_Damn it_. Carth straightened, looking up. The speaker was a Mrlssi, peering at him semi-myopically in the dingy light. He was struggling to find some kind of even half-convincing explanation, when abruptly the Mrlssi's eyes went even wider than normal, and it disappeared back into its own apartment like a retracting jack-in-the-box.

Just for a moment, he was baffled by the behaviour. Then he glanced down and realised that his jacket had fallen open just far enough to reveal the grip of his holstered blaster pistol. At least with the current circumstances in Fondor, even if the Mrlssi called the police, there wasn't likely to be a rapid response.

The door behind him whispered open.

He whirled, reaching down and drawing the pistol in a single smooth motion. And found himself staring down the barrel of his old blaster.

After several seconds of tense, silent standoff Yolanda cracked a sardonic looking half-smile. "Hello Valdan. Fancy seeing you here. Are we going to shoot each other in the hallway then?"

"I'll lower my gun when you lower _my_ gun."

She gave a fractional nod of appreciation. "Now then?"

"Now," he agreed.

"I suppose you'd better come in," she said after a pause. "It is just you, isn't it? You don't have any big bad bogeymen with you right now?"

"Not yet anyway. But I'm guessing it's only a matter of time."

She looked different, he noted. There was a brown collar length wig, make-up that softened the angles of her face slightly, and the kind of plain grey suit that a mid-grade Fondorian office worker might wear. On the streets, he'd have had difficulty picking her out from the crowds.

In response, she grunted, and he gestured to the doorway behind her. "After you?"

"Too kind."

The interior of the apartment looked liked a particular kind of cheap hotel room – plain, solidly robust furniture and fittings, and no hint of personality to give any hint that anyone ever did more than pass straight on through. "Safe house?" he asked.

"Oh, I doubt it's particularly safe. You found it easily enough, after all. The Verpine?"

"The Verpine," he confirmed.

"I'm surprise you got him to talk. You don't seem ruthless enough."

He shrugged, deciding to let that pass. "I threatened his protocol droid. He seemed quite fond of it."

"Ah. Clever of you."

Carth's gaze settled on a low metal table in the centre of the room. On it lay the combination-locked box, now open. Next to it was a datapad – presumably what it had contained. Before Yolanda could stop him, he strode directly across and snatched it up.

She started to protest, but then simply shrugged – feigned indifference. "May as well take a look. I'm presuming it'll make exactly as much sense to you as it does to me."

Carth was already scrolling through the data. He frowned, brow creasing. "What is this?"

"You tell me." She sounded darkly amused.

"They look like . . . genetic sequences?" He looked up at her again, realising that if she'd wanted to, she could have pulled her stolen gun on him again. She hadn't.

"That would be my guess," she agreed.

"Human?"

"Some of them are, I think. There're thirty-eight of them in all."

"So who do they belong to?" Carth was feeling vaguely perplexed. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but this all seemed rather . . . anti-climactic.

Yolanda favoured him with a slanted smile. "If I knew that . . ." A barely perceptible headshake. "They've only got numbers attached, as you can see. No names."

"Surely you've got some idea," he insisted.

"I don't. Look a bit further down." She leant across him. "Yes, there. Much more interesting don't you think?"

If he could have made either head or tail of what he was looking at, it might have been. He looked at her at her inquiringly.

"Chemical formulas. Highly complex ones. And before you ask, I'm no chemist. Even if I was, I suspect I'd still need to put that lot through a supercomputer to get a proper analysis. It was what Jerstyl Daxar was working on when he died. Highly secretive. I didn't even know the client it was being done for, and that's unusual. Had me worried, to be honest. Made me think my cover might have been blown."

A thought occurred to Carth. "Do you think this list of people might be Jedi?" Council members perhaps, and the formula a poison designed to kill the – what had Tamar called them? – midichlorians, in a person's cells. Suddenly there was a pang of excitement. Perhaps this might be the smoking gun – the thing that could get Tamar off the hook and show the link to the real culprit.

_Easy, easy. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here_.

"How the hell should I know?" Yolanda was looking at him strangely. "And why would you say that?"

"Never mind. It's not important." His voice suddenly became flat and hard. "Who were you talking to? Who did you send all this to?"

Yolanda gave a snorting laugh and walked away from him. "So, you were listening at the door, were you? Careless of me, I suppose. If you must know, that was my handler. And that's the only form of answer you're going to get from me."

"Just who exactly do you work for?"

"Did you fail basic comprehension skills, Valdan? Or is it just that you've got the short term memory span of an Ardan gulpfish?" Shaking her head, she snatched up a bag from one of the chairs. "Come on. Given the amount of attention you've undoubtedly attracted, we should probably get out of here."

"We?"

"Aren't you going to insist?" She raised an eyebrow. "Well, then. No point me arguing, is there?"

Shaking his head in exasperation, Carth followed her.

-s-s-

Yuthura rose slowly back to her feet. Blood ran in sticky tracks down the side of her face from a tear in her scalp. She was intensely aware of the dozen or so guns that were pointed in her direction. Her lightsaber lay on the floor between her feet. Although it could spring to her hand and ignite in no more than a fraction of a second, there was no chance at all that she could deflect every shot aimed her way before they slammed into her body from point blank range.

Inwardly, she berated herself for the sheer idiocy that had gotten her into this position. If there was anyone who should have known the mindset of a slave, and how they were likely to react in a given circumstance, it should have been her.

Of course someone who'd been enslaved for most of their life wasn't going to take an uncertain chance of freedom. Of course they weren't going to be grateful for having the stability of their existence – however bad that might be – shattered. Instead, they were going to be scared – near frantic, and looking for a chance to avoid punishment; looking for a chance to prove their loyalty and worth.

But that was only one tiny part of her stupidity. Not able to be ruthless enough to take the opportunity when it was there. Not able to control emotion and memory well enough to avoid the situation in the first place. Neither one thing nor the other.

"Well? What now then?"

"Now I dispose of annoyances I no longer need, and are too dangerous to keep as pets." Seboba activated a communicator and spoke into it. "Deactivate shielding around the isolated decks and open them to vacuum."

Yuthura couldn't stop herself from flinching. Inside she felt as cold and brittle as ice.

Seboba's laugh boomed. "Do you have any idea how long I have spent on making this moment happen? Do you have any idea on how long I have sought you out?"

She didn't say anything, furious with herself.

"There were times when I started thinking this opportunity would never come. When I thought you might always remain beyond my reach. Then I heard about the assassination of the Jedi Council, and that you and Revan were being blamed, the entire galaxy hunting for your heads. I knew then that my chance had come. Ironic really that one old adversary should lead me to another . . ."

Yuthura wasn't listening to the Hutt's gloating. Instead, she had forced a fragile, temporary calm, reaching into the minds of one of those guarding her – a Klatooinian, who had obviously heard Seboba's verbosity one to many times before, and was letting his attention wander. Her touch light and fleeting, all she did was subtly alter his senses, shifting his perception of her position a few degrees to the left. She skipped across a pair of Echani, who were far too focussed and disciplined for her to affect without their noticing, then found a Nicto, who was likewise letting his thoughts wander, and did the same to him too.

Seboba finished talking. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, so she obliged.

"There is still time to release me, restore the environmental shields and re-pressurise the exposed decks, Seboba. You can still avoid your fate."

There was more booming, bullfrog laughter. "Your feeble mind tricks won't work on one such as me."

But they did work fairly well on the Klatooinian and the Nicto. Both of them, in their minds eye, suddenly saw her reach down to grab her lightsaber. Near simultaneously they pulled the triggers on their respective weapons . . . and shot each other.

They hit each other in the legs, obviously under instruction not to do her fatal damage, crying out in pain and collapsing together.

The other guards' attention momentarily left her, since she had clearly not moved, vainly searching for the hidden assailant. In that instant she activated her personal shield, calling her lightsaber to hand. Igniting it, she span round through a hundred and eighty degrees.

A couple of blaster shots deflected off the glowing purple blade. Another actually penetrated her defences, cracking off her shields with an impact that felt like a sharp jab to the ribs. A shot that missed over her shoulder hit the aquarium full of paddy-frogs, scattering them across the floor in a rush of brackish water. By then, she was flipping straight over their heads, out of their firing arc.

As she landed, she struck out with all the grace, discipline and economy of movement of the dancer she had once been, this time channelled in an altogether deadlier direction. The two Echani were alert enough to survive the first pass, but they were the only ones. The others were either dead or down, limbs sundered from bodies as they became caught up in the blazing whirlwind she seemed to have become.

As the Echani attempted to counterattack, she caught them both with a single force wave, knocking them off their feet and slamming them hard against the wall. One stubbornly tried to rise – attempted to swing at her. Her lightsaber evaded his vibroblade and pierced him through the chest, hissing and crackling as it flash-fried soft tissues. The second hastily dropped his weapons and scrambled away from her, hands raised in supplication.

With a breath she let him go – released the cold, killing focus.

Behind her, she heard a soft humming noise – whirled.

Seboba's repulsor-sled was moving with startling rapidity, straight toward a door that had opened behind him, seemingly out of blank wall. The Hutt had obviously seen enough and decided that discretion – and running like hell – was by far the better part of valour. Immediately she drew on the force again, shaping it in a fashion that Jolee had recently taught her. Crackling ionised energy leapt from her fingertips.

The repulsor-sled died with a pathetic sounding whine, tipping over onto its side and depositing Seboba in a heap on the floor.

Just for a moment, their eyes met.

The Hutt's gaze held both vituperative hate and fear. He startled her by suddenly gathering himself and sliding the last few metres across the floor, through the door, which immediately slid shut behind him.

She could have thrown her lightsaber to intercept. She could catch him still – slice through the door, then chase him down. There wasn't a chance that the Hutt could outrun her.

_And when she caught him . . ._

She hesitated though.

_What do you want?_

As long as she allowed what had happened in her past to continue to define a core part of her, there would always be that part of her which remained the slave. Each time she tried to kill it, she simply gave it the ground in which to take root more solidly.

Letting go . . . she obviously hadn't achieved that, even through the Jedi teachings. And she hadn't suddenly achieved it now. But when the choice came down to trying to save the others, or abandoning them to try and slay the past – compounding her mistakes, or trying to correct them – the decision suddenly became clear.

As long as you allowed yourself to see the reality of the choice, it was simple.

Although simple and easy were not the same things.

She turned away and let Seboba go. "HK, head for the bridge. I'll meet you there."

-s-s-

Seboba wheezed and gasped to a halt, his vast bulk quivering with effort. He hadn't moved this far at such a frantic, undignified pace under his own power since adolescence, and now it felt like someone had poured molten lead into his lungs. The muscles he'd been careful not to allow to slide totally into blubber – thus rendering him completely immobile, like so many of his elder brethren – burned from effort they had become unaccustomed to.

He tried to listen, but for a time the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own stentorian breathing and the thudding of his mighty heart. As he gradually recovered, it became clear that there was no immediate pursuit, and briefly, he considered turning back and trying to hold onto his ship.

But no. In his head, he saw the flash of purple lightsaber slicing through armour and flesh alike – the pale, hateful blood-streaked face behind it. That would be too much the risk, and a Hutt did not grow as old and large as he had without knowing which risks to take, and which to avoid.

Hate filled him then. Being forced to abandon his own ship. Being forced to take such a financial loss, with the accompanying loss of face. Until now, there had been little hate in his pursuit – merely the obligations of family honour, and the need to remove the lingering stain of weakness.

Hate, he had always thought, should be nurtured and allowed to mature like finest Corellian Brandy. You should never rush it, and when it did finally become time to crack it open and drink deeply, the taste would be all the sweeter to savour.

He started forward again, toward the sleek, gleaming yacht berthed in his private landing bay, almost having managed to convince himself that this too was all part of the plan.

Abruptly he stopped. The rear entry ramp was down.

He hadn't left the ramp down. His maintenance crews knew far better than to be so careless.

Someone was standing there. For a moment, he struggled to work out how Ban could possibly have gotten ahead of him. Then he realised that it wasn't her. The silhouette was too big, probably male and human.

Fury filled him, overwhelming any thoughts of circumspection. "Who dares . . .?"

The figure, who had been talking to someone else further inside the yacht, turned around and stepped forward. The dim light of the landing bay gleamed on polished metal.

For a moment, Seboba thought that it was simply armour. Then the figure took another couple of forward steps, and he saw it was a cyborg. A big mean-looking, heavily armed cyborg.

"Well, well. Look at what we have here." The cyborg gestured to someone over his shoulder. "No, stay out of this. This is mine."

The private landing bay was packed full of automated defence systems and battle droids concealed in various alcoves, ready to spring to his command at a moment's notice. Seboba activated the remote he carried to trigger them.

Nothing happened.

"Don't you recognise me, you fat sack of slime?"

Seboba peered at the figure. One member of a lesser race was typically very similar to another.

"Oh come on, surely you do? All that entertainment I gave you. No?" Kreed took another couple of steps forward. The expression on his face was nominally a smile. "Does this jog your memory? I once disagreed with something of yours that ate me."

-s-s-

"What are the radiation levels like?" Tamar asked, his voice quiet as it carried over the comm. of his scavenged environment suit.

"You really want to know the answer to that one?" Jolee's answer was sour.

"That good, huh?"

"We've got maybe an hour before we take any lasting damage."

Tamar grunted. "Maybe we can cut our way through . . ."

It was Zaalbar who nixed that idea, mournfully pointing out that the melting point of starship grade plasteel meant it would take about six hours to cut a hole through the couple of feet or so of it they'd need to, even with the help of a lightsaber. The Wookiee was crammed into a suit that had probably belonged to something like a Trandoshan. It was just barely large enough to seal around his frame, but it looked like it was doing painful, and possibly damaging, things to his posture.

A space walk to a section of the ship that was still pressurised and had its shields up meant exposing themselves even more directly to the Maw's radiation. T3 might make it, but none of the rest of them would. The landing bays, which were now fully open to the void, had already reached radiation levels nearing those of outside, so grabbing a ship and simply flying out was likewise problematic.

Everything else that Tamar had come up with ran into similar dead ends. At this point, it felt like he was treading through ever decreasing circles. _There has to be bloody something_.

His communicator beeped, startling him. Seboba, was his initial thought, ready to make demands now that he'd demonstrated he meant business.

It was Yuthura.

"We could use a little help here," he told her when the surprise and relief had passed. "Things are . . . looking a little sticky at the moment."

"I'm in control of the bridge." On the surface, her voice was cool and business-like, but there was something else underneath. "The environmental shields are up again, and I'm having atmospheric pressure restored. It's likely to take a few hours though, so you're stuck in the suits for the moment."

"You took control of the bridge," he said eventually. "On your own?"

There was a delay. "The way things work around here, whoever holds the biggest stick controls the ship. Right now HK is the biggest stick, and I hold HK. More or less." Another brief pause. "I haven't seen such forced enthusiasm and disingenuousness since the academy on Korriban."

"And Seboba?" As he said it, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Crawled away somewhere." It was dismissive. "He might pop up somewhere and cause more trouble, but for the moment things are just about under control." Her voice sounded . . . he didn't know what it sounded, but strange.

After a moment, she added, scarcely louder than a whisper. "I'm sorry."

He blinked, temporarily too surprised to say anything.

-s-s-

"Personal business all taken care off?" It was Rath's voice that greeted Kreed as he walked back up the yacht's ramp.

"All taken care off," he confirmed heavily. "You might want to watch where you're stepping out there. It's a bit . . . messy. Frag grenade enema," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"Charming." Abruptly Rath's tone became all business. "There's been a change of plan."

"Oh?" Kreed stopped in his tracks. The plasteel sections of his body glistened wetly with a residue of Hutt blood and other internal fluids. "I thought we were all agreed. Get this thing up and running, and get clear. Rendezvous with the _Ebon Hawk_."

"Circumstances have changed." Rath's voice sounded brisk – almost cheerful. Kreed immediately developed a profound sinking feeling.

"Ygress managed to hack his way into the onboard communication system. Just before you and Seboba did your . . . _business,_ the Hutt managed to trap Revan and most of his companions. They're still stuck, for the moment, as good as helpless. Right now, Yuthura Ban has gained nominal control over the _Rancorous's_ bridge, but that's all it is. Nominal. If we move fast and strike hard, we regain everything we thought we'd lost the chance of." Their was a quiet ferocity. "This is our opportunity. We can't afford to let it slip."

Kreed nodded slowly. "Yeah, I agree. You're absolutely right there."

Rath looked surprised.

With utmost care and precision, Kreed hit him – a meticulously weighted blow to the jaw. As Rath crumpled, legs giving way, he caught him. A slight grunt of effort and he hauled his boss up, over his shoulder. It took a moment or two to get him comfortably settled, then he started walking further inside Seboba's yacht.

He met Shak coming the other way. Their eyes locked

Shak, he was aware, might be a problem. Not because of Rath per se, but simply because the big Trandoshan was seemingly always on the look out for any reason at all to start a fight. Shak just sneered though, going on with whatever it was he'd been doing without a word.

Ravelasch was a different matter.

The Defel seemed to materialise out of nothing directly in front of him. Kreed was aware of several other members of the brothers fanning out behind him. They were loyal to Rath, and only Rath, unto death.

"What are you doing?"

To start with, it was civil, but Kreed could sense the tension behind the words. "Tough love. You heard of that Rav? Sometimes, when someone's not seeing clearly, you have to step in. For their own good. For everyone's good."

Ravelasch didn't say anything. Seconds ticked by, and Kreed grew increasingly uncomfortable, wondering if he'd blown it.

Then, abruptly, Ravelasch stepped aside.

Kreed let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. "So come on then. Let's get this heap powered up. The _Hawk's_ going to be here soon. Best not keep them waiting."


	13. Red Knight's Gambit

_Big thanks to Jedi Boadicea for beta reading this chapter for me._

_Thanks for the kind comments, Kosiah. Kreed is my own creation. I'm not aware of any one source I've taken him from, but I'm sure he amalgamates traits from any number of sci-fi characters I've read and watched over the years. I was just trying to come up with a Mandalorian character who wasn't a complete Canderous clone._

_Also, thanks to everyone else for their continued reviews. It's wonderful to get such consistently detailed feedback, and I'm sure its one of the factors that has kept my enthusiasm for writing this story so high._

* * *

**13. Red Knight's Gambit**

"You know, of course, that this doesn't make a blind bit of sense," Canderous pointed out.

Bastila looked up from the holographic star charts she was poring over. "Excuse me? Which part of it, exactly, are you struggling with?"

"All of it."

An acerbic retort about old Mandalorian warriors and the debilitating affects of a few too many head injuries remained unspoken. Instead, she reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. She'd been staring at the star charts and various data pads so intently that, now her eyes had refocused, everything looked strange and blurred. Blinking a few times in rapid succession helped slightly. "Care to be more specific? Or are you content with uttering vague and unhelpful prophecies of doom?"

Canderous snorted. "Well, according to your vision, all of this is about ships, right?"

A tiny shiver passed through her at the reminder. It lurked constantly, just beneath the surface.

At first there appeared to be nothing but blackness, so total that, for a moment – especially after the previous, dizzying, disorientating, emotionally devastating rush of images and colour and feelings – it felt like she'd been struck blind. Then, after a short time, a sliver of light intruded. It reflected in a raven glimmer upon the flank of something utterly vast before her.

She became aware of slowly pulling back – a sense of gathering momentum – and the gleaming black vastness gradually resolved into a recognisable shape. A starship: sleek, streamlined, and shark-like. A Rakatan starship. It was similar enough in character to those vessels she'd seen the Sith using that the derivation was unmistakeable, but it was different too. Its profile looked flatter, though it was impossible, without any form of visual reference around it, to tell whether this was because it was a more compact form of vessel, or because it had been stretched out breadthways. There were also strange, sleek bulges along its flanks that gave its appearance an extra muscularity – a sense of barely contained, predatory power that was somehow profoundly disquieting.

The rate at which she was pulling back increased exponentially, becoming so fast that she seemed almost in danger of leaving her stomach and other internal organs behind. She could see there were more ships around this first one. Two, four, sixteen . . . more than she could possibly hope to count, stretching as far as the eye could see in this strange, inky void, all gleaming . . . all waiting with expectancy.

Almost seeming alive somehow.

"A vast fleet of ships," she emphasised. "I couldn't count them all, but there were hundreds of them." Like someone had turned the Star Forge on to full capacity for a year, and simply stored everything that it produced . . . somewhere, waiting to be used. She frowned. "If Darth Malefic gets hold of that many warships at once, he'll be able to take total control of the Sith Empire within a matter of weeks. By the time he's finished he'll have a fleet as big as Darth Malak ever controlled at his disposal, the artefact he took from the _Flying Kuat, _and a Republic that's too busy chasing round after its own internal problems to put up a proper defence."

"Yeah," Canderous started to nod. "But no."

"Excuse me?"

Canderous glowered at her. He looked ragged, unshaven and even harder than normal. Bastila realised it must have been getting on for 72 hours since he'd had any hint of sleep. "The Sith don't have a problem with the number of ships they can field. You looked at the intelligence reports lately?"

She hadn't. Not the ones he meant, anyway. She'd been too busy with other matters.

A hand came up, very briefly to rub his eyes – a rare half-hint of weakness. "If you do the maths, a unified Sith could, even now, put out a force that's a third again as large as the one Revan had at his disposal, and more than three times the size of what the Mandalore could field, even at the start of the war with the Republic. Malak, for all his tactical limitations, was one single-minded son-of-a-bitch, and boy, did he build ships. The Battle of the Star Forge put the brakes on that, of course, but it didn't do a whole lot about the fleet he'd already assembled. The majority of that's still out there." A grimace. "If the succession of a new Dark Lord had been smooth. If Saul Karath had survived and been allowed to do his job . . .. We'd be having a very different conversation than the one we are right now."

He gave a weary headshake. "No, Malefic's limiting factor is men. Give him a couple of hundred new capital ships and what's he going to do with them? They don't fly themselves, last I heard. Rakatan ships may be personnel efficient compared with the equivalent Republic vessels, but you're still going to have to come up with a couple of hundred thousand trained crew members to get them up to even minimum operational capacity. And the fact is, the Sith are struggling to properly crew all the ships they've already got."

Bastila stared at him. Put like that his assessment sounded entirely reasonable, except . . . it was wrong. She couldn't say how, but she knew it had to be. "We still can't let him waltz off with them."

"Did you hear me suggesting that?" He held her gaze with his, almost ferocious. "But that's just the first in a whole list of things that completely reek about this."

"Like?" she prompted.

He grimaced and stood up, beginning to pace like a large and particularly grizzled predator restlessly staking out its territory. "For starters, look at what we know about the whole why of this. Some woman – maybe or maybe not another in the line of wannabe Dark Lords – came to Daragba ahead of us, and altered something about this damned Vision Well. We're operating under the assumption that what she altered was this vision you received, about a hidden Rakatan fleet. There's also evidence she had something to do with Horvath on Drumond Kaas. Hell, she may have been manipulating this whole sorry run around the Outer Rim from the beginning. We agreed on this much?"

Bastila's response was cautious. She watched him prowl. "A lot of that is guesswork based on what, at best, is circumstantial evidence."

A forceful nod. "But on the basis of what we know, it's our current best guess. Right?"

After a moment, she nodded in turn. "Right."

"Then why the frak, if she knows about this fleet, hasn't she claimed it for herself? Why deliver it into the hands of a rival?"

Bastila didn't blink – had already gone through this in her own head. "Because she can't crew the fleet. She doesn't appear in Republic intelligence files like Malefic and Auza, because she doesn't have a military powerbase the same way they do. Instead, she's a manipulator who stays in the background. She gives the fleet to Darth Malefic, because she believes that she can control the fleet through him."

"Yeah, okay." Another nod. "I could pick holes, but okay. Go with that for now. So that leads to why doesn't she just tell him where this fleet is? Why this performance? Lah-di-fraking-dah . . . let's all run around the Outer Rim like clipped mynocks, chasing phantoms and following in Revan's footsteps as if it's all some ridiculous fraking adventure tourism trail."

Bastila folded her arms and sat back, watching him with narrowed eyes and wondering what his real problem was. "Because they're rivals. Enemies. Malefic wouldn't trust anything a rival told him directly, so she has to make him think that he's discovering all this for himself – leapt through a few hoops and earned it by his own cleverness."

His expression said he didn't buy it. "I can think of a dozen different ways of accomplishing the same result right off the top of my head that are far easier and quicker than this one."

"Then maybe having him occupied, 'running around the Outer Rim like a clipped mynock', is the whole point. Keep him distracted, his attention focussed away from Sith space. There's no saying there even is a fleet out there. The vision could just be bait for a trap – something she knew Malefic wouldn't be able to resist." Inwardly that didn't ring true. Inwardly, it was almost impossible to doubt the veracity of the vision . . . the realness.

Which was undoubtedly all part of what she was supposed to feel.

Canderous was looking at her intently, a sour grimace twisting his mouth. "It still reeks."

"Who was it that said the Jedi have a problem with thinking too much," Bastila murmured. "I forget."

The look he shot her was withering.

She ignored it. "I don't know what you're worried about anyway. You're under no obligation to see this through. You don't like it? You have the choice of walking away, any time you like."

The expression on his face seemed to freeze over, and he stopped pacing. She realised, uncomfortably, that she'd managed to strike a nerve she hadn't even suspected was present. "What are you implying, exactly?"

She let out a breath – tried to defuse matters. "I'm not implying anything."

"If you think I'm going to walk away from this, then you obviously know nothing at all about Mandalorians." He seemed close to genuinely angry. "We see things through. All the way to the bitter and bloody end. No matter what."

"If I know nothing about Mandalorians," she state with stiff precision, "It's because you're hardly voluble on the subject, are you? If I offended you, you have my apologies."

He snorted.

She tried to turn her attention back to the maps and datapads, but found she couldn't concentrate. It felt like Canderous's eyes were boring into the back of her skull, although every time she looked round he wasn't even looking in her direction.

Finally, she gave up. "What?"

"Didn't say a word, Princess." He smirked, any anger long gone. "Although there is one thing, given as how we've both agreed on a new spirit of openness and sharing."

She frowned at him – folded her arms.

He either didn't, or chose not to, notice. "Just something that's been on my mind a bit of late. How does a non-force user go about keeping a force-adept out of their head? Anything more to it than plain old strength of will?"

The question took her by surprise. "Why?"

Canderous grunted. "Look, it's not too difficult for you, surely? We're both figuring to go up against Darth Malefic very soon now. That's the plan, or am I wrong? I was there at Tylace, like all the rest of us. I felt what we all did, and when it comes to it, I'd sooner not end up one of the mind burnt if I can avoid it. Dying in battle is one thing, but that . . ." He shook his head. "So. My question."

There was something else too. Another motive, other than the stated one – he'd never bothered to raise the matter before now. Trying to discern it, though, was somewhat akin to trying to smash her way through a starship hull with her forehead.

"If there's anyone in the galaxy that doesn't have to worry about that, then believe me, it's you. You've got a head like solid rock and pretty much nothing gets in or out."

"Tried then, have you, Princess?" By his standards, his voice was light, almost within the bounds of teasing. "Yeah, I guess I must be pretty damn fascinating."

Immediately she felt her cheeks heating, which was absolutely the worst response possible. Her efforts to stop her face going pink inevitably just accelerated the process. "That wasn't what I meant at all."

"Uh-huh."

She forced herself to concentrate on the purely factual, but the heat was slow to fade. "Erm . . ." She struggled to find a place to start. "Some species – Hutts, Toydarians and Dashade for instance – have a different neural physiology that gives them a very effective in built resistance to influence by the force . . ."

"Assume here, for sake of argument, that a brain transplant with a Hutt isn't a viable option right now."

She glared at him. "Do you want to hear this, or are you just looking for something to help hone your sarcasm?"

He waved for her to continue.

"The point being, that something that alters the brain chemistry of a person even just slightly – for example, certain types of battle stims – can act as a reasonably effective shield."

"Okay, check. Stims. Go on."

"Other than that, like you say, it's mental discipline. If a person focuses intently enough on something, it's much more difficult to sway them from that, and much less likely they'll fall prey to force induced fear, confusion, insanity or any other effect. Iridorians are known to use various battle hymns and ritual chants as a focussing method. Echani firedancers use ceremonial drugs and meditation techniques. Presumably Mandalorians are just a bunch of stubborn, infuriating, contrary bastards."

That actually drew an appreciative laugh, though it faded quickly. His eyes were like iron filings. "And that's all there is to it? Keep your concentration, and Malefic won't find his way in."

"No." Her voice was very soft then. "What we felt at Tylace. That kind of power . . . if that power focuses directly on you for long enough . . . you won't keep it out." A shudder passed through her at the memory. "I don't think anything will keep that out." And this time round Jedi Zikl wasn't there to save her.

He didn't seem perturbed. "So that makes attack the best form of defence. Hit hard. Hit fast. Don't give him time to focus on you." He smiled grimly. "Always my preferred tactic."

She sat back, rubbing her eyes, suddenly massively tired herself. "So, does that cover what you wanted to know?"

He made a noncommittal sound. "Jedi, and by inference, Sith can pick-up on a person's emotions and intent, right? Whether someone's lying, or intent on aggression, or whatever. Maybe get advance warning on their actions."

She wondered what he was really getting at. "It's not like the mind's a book or anything. You can't just reach in, turn a page over, and read it. The best you can generally do is flashes and general impressions – sometimes even an isolated image. If someone is lying, generally it occupies a large portion of their conscious thoughts, and has various associated physiological reactions too. Likewise with anger or fear, or other very strong emotions. Those we can generally pick up on, but it's a long way from foolproof. Trained field agents, for instance, are often taught to compartmentalise thoughts and inhibit physical responses. The very skilled can lie to most Jedi just as easily as they can to anyone else."

Canderous nodded. "Yeah, that about covers what I wanted to know." He stood up abruptly. "I'm going to check on progress with Organa. See when we're likely to be ready to depart, then maybe grab a bite to eat. You want me to get you anything?"

She shook her head. "No thanks. I'm fine."

"Suit yourself." He turned around and walked out, the door whispering shut at his back.

Bastila stared after him, very, very suspicious – though about what, she couldn't pinpoint. Something about that whole conversation just hadn't rung true.

- - -

Captain Vorsk Bortha hesitated outside the doors of Darth Malefic's quarters and attempted to gather himself. Fear crawled inside his gut – a trapped rodent struggling to free itself by gnawing through his intestines.

He reminded himself that he was a captain of the Sith Fleet, and had seen action in over thirty major engagements. That he had served under both Darth Revan and Malak, and had been decorated several times over for exemplary service and valour under enemy fire.

It didn't help, particularly. The enemy was far less frightening than his own side.

Able to feel himself sweating, the collar of his previously immaculately fitting uniform suddenly uncomfortably tight, he reached out and activated the intercom. "Sir, this is . . ."

The doors slid open in front of him, utterly silent. He choked to a halt.

What lay beyond the doors initially seemed to be total blackness. After a second or so, his eyes adjusted slightly, and he realised that there was a very small amount of light. He could also hear something that sounded like running water.

Swallowing, he forced himself to break the paralysis and step over the threshold. Immediately the doors slid shut behind him.

His heart was racing then, taking him to the precipitous edge of a full-blown panic attack. _The sooner you do this, the sooner it's over_, he reminded himself_. And you've never, ever been afraid of the dark._

Gradually composure reasserted itself – a surface layer, at least.

The dim light came from an open doorway, beyond the chamber's main entrance hall. So did the sound of running water. He forced himself to walk towards it, body assuming the stiff 'at attention' posture that was second nature to it. At the threshold, he stopped hard.

Darth Malefic sat motionless, with his back to the doorway in a bizarre looking chair. The dim light came from a semi-circle of candles arranged in front of him – perhaps as some kind of meditation aid. Captain Bortha didn't really notice any of that on more than a peripheral level, though.

What he did notice was that Malefic was out of his armour.

Bortha had never seen what lay beneath that armour. In fact, he wasn't aware – even in rumour – of a single person who had. He stared. He couldn't stop himself.

Malefic wasn't human. The back of his skull was visible over the top of the chair's back, bald save for a single glossy black topknot. Fine scales covered his scalp, and through some kind of trick of the meagre, flickering light, he couldn't tell if they were pale green or a shade of rusty red close to the colour of dried blood. Every time Bortha tried to focus his eyes, his brain received a different answer.

_A Falleen_, the rational part of his brain supplied.

It wasn't a surprise, he told himself. The unsettling softness and ever so slight undertone of sibilance of his voice had always made Bortha suspect Malefic was a non-human, though he had never thought too hard about it. Even thinking too hard about a Sith Lord could potentially be dangerous.

He realised that he'd been standing there, unspeaking, for far too long, and cleared his throat uncomfortably. "My Lord, you asked to be informed in person of our arrival."

"Very good, Captain."

"We have also received word from your apprentice, my Lord. She is on the last leg of her journey, and will be rendezvousing with us within the next 60 hours, as ordered."

"Excellent."

The timbre of that voice made Bortha shiver. He swallowed. "I should inform you, my Lord, that our sensors have not picked up anything at all within a hundred-million cubic kilometres of this position." Even down to grains of interstellar dust.

There was no answer right away. Instead, Malefic's seat made a soft humming noise and began to smoothly rotate. Bortha managed to keep his jaw from dropping, but couldn't prevent himself staring.

Darth Malefic was stripped, at least to the waist – the chair enclosed his body below that, hiding it from view – and clear liquid, presumably water, flowed constantly over his fine-scaled skin. Somehow, paradoxically, he managed to look even bigger and more powerful without the usual covering of bulky armour – a monstrously huge mass of hard and knotted muscle, drawn with fine lines of scar tissue.

Now, Bortha could see beyond a doubt that the effect he'd witnessed before – the strangely shifting colouring from green to dull, rusty red – was not the optical illusion he'd first taken it to be. The slow but constant shifting, from one colour to the other and back again in blotchy, mottled patterns, made it look almost like the Sith Lord's skin was trying to crawl away and escape from his flesh.

A Falleen's skin could, Bortha recalled, change colour in response to its owner's emotional state. White indicated fear, green being the natural, neutral state, and red representing anger.

Did the shifting indicate some titanic rage, lurking just beneath the surface and warring constantly for control It was a disquieting thought.

His gaze lifted to Malefic's face. And stopped. There was a long, narrow diagonal scar running across it that separated it into two distinct halves. These halves no longer quite lined up. The scar itself was hard and pale, the only thing that was constant about that face, which crawled and shifted like the rest of him.

"Of course the ship's sensors will not have found anything, Captain." The voice was mild, belying Bortha's thoughts of barely restrained fury. "If what we seek was so easy to find, would we have had to search so hard? And would others have not found it already?"

Bortha inclined his head respectfully. "My Lord."

"You are curious about my scar, Captain." It was statement rather than a question, as mild as before. Malefic's gaze fixed upon Bortha's face, his eyes disturbing in their sheer ordinariness. That face should not have had eyes that were so blandly unremarkable. They almost seemed to have been stolen from somebody else.

Bortha almost choked. "My Lord, that is none of my concern . . ."

"I feel your curiosity. And your fear. I scare you, don't I, Captain. I scare you more now than I do even in my armour."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Good." The smile was neither cruel nor unpleasant, and all the worse for that. "I received the scar at the hands of Darth Malak." His tone became contemplative. "It was after he lost his jaw at Revan's hands. As part of his recuperation, we sparred together regularly. On one occasion, after Revan had been to visit him, Malak smashed my blunted practise blade to fragments with his own, and then did similar to my skull and face. The rage in him then – the sheer power it gave him . . . I have never seen the like before or since. Afterwards I lay in a coma for nearly three weeks but, once I had recovered, I took my new name and pledged my blade to _his_ cause, above all others. I knew then and there that a changing of the guard was coming, and I was glad."

Captain Bortha didn't say anything. Privately, he believed that the day that Darth Revan had been overthrown was one of the most disastrous in Sith history; the day when everything had started to fall irrevocably apart and ultimate victory had been lost. He strangled that thought way down, beneath the surface where he hoped it couldn't be glimpsed.

"You are also curious about my skin, and wonder what the shifting pigmentation signifies."

Bortha jolted at the words.

"An uncontrollable anger perhaps, struggling continuously to burst to the surface in a vast, volcanic eruption."

Bortha didn't say anything, thinking it far better not to interrupt.

A fractional smile. "Alas, it is nothing quite so melodramatic – although that interpretation is so much better than mundane reality. I suffer from a genetic disorder – quite rare, but not unheard of in my species. It prevents me from controlling the shifting of my skin's pigmentation, and – more importantly – stops me from producing the pheromones that are so important a part of Falleen social interaction. Among my kind I am considered a pitiable cripple, incapable of partaking properly in normal life."

Abruptly, Darth Malefic turned the flow of water off. The silence it left behind was echoing. A moment later, the front of the chair swung open and he started to rise. He wasn't wearing anything below the waist either, but didn't seem the least bit troubled by his nakedness.

Then he winced, a hand coming up to press against his brow, eyes screwing shut as he leant forward, halfway to doubling over. A low, thrumming groan escaped from somewhere deep inside the Sith Lord's chest.

Suddenly Bortha's heart was hammering again, trying to batter its way through his sternum. He hung back, unsure what to do. Memories of the fate of Mek Valloon played through his head. He worried that even witnessing this momentary show of weakness had a fair chance of proving fatal.

The momentary seizure passed quickly, and Malefic straightened again. "I feel the weight of the crown, even now when I do not wear it," he murmured. Bortha wasn't at all sure that he was meant to be hearing this. He certainly didn't want to hear it. "It is a heavy burden. So _very_ heavy."

Involuntarily, Bortha's gaze moved beyond Darth Malefic. He saw then that the crown lay on the floor in the centre of the semi-circle of candles, the twin crystal spikes at the front of it glittering in the shifting light.

"But sometimes victory requires certain discomfort be born and sacrifices be made. Wouldn't you agree, Captain?"

Bortha hesitated. "I suppose that would depend on the nature of the sacrifices, my Lord."

Malefic chuckled. "Neatly evaded. An answer that cleverly avoids contradicting either the Sith Code, or me."

Abruptly, he gestured towards something behind Bortha's left shoulder. Bortha found himself turning to follow the gesture without making any conscious decision to do so. He jolted when three giant metal figures seemed to loom out of the shadows at him.

Darth Malefic's armour, he realised belatedly as his brain struggled to catch up with his senses. He barely choked back an embarrassing yelp.

First there was the purple, martial and baroque. That was the armour Malefic wore on formal and ceremonial occasions. The dress armour. The armour of command. Next to it came the red, similar in design but sleeker and less ornate, its lines redolent of violence and savage vitality. Malefic's combat armour, worn when the Sith Lord went personally into battle. Finally there was the black. Bortha had never seen the black before, and he wasn't sure he wanted to speculate on what set of circumstances would call for that.

"Since you are here, Captain, you might as well make yourself useful and help me dress."

Bortha swallowed. "Which one, my Lord?"

The response was immediate. "The red."

- - -

"Where is Jedi Bastila?"

Canderous grunted. Wind gusted across the shuttle landing-pad, carrying the promise of imminent rain. So much for pleasantries and the famed Jedi diplomacy and politeness. Not that in normal circumstances he would have given a damn about such inanities, but right now – for perhaps one time only in recorded history – they might have come in handy, as time-waster and distraction both.

He looked the speaker up and down. The battle stims coursing through his veins gave everything a weird, jittery edge and the world around him seemed to be crawling by in slow motion. He had to concentrate hard on each and every action just to keep himself operating in the right timeframe.

Jedi Knight Tobin Gracey, the man's name was. A big human Guardian, several centimetres taller than him, and equally as broad. Blonde, square-jawed and wholesome-looking to an improbable degree, he was at least twenty years his junior, but not by the look of it, particularly seasoned. Almost certainly a Hapan, Canderous decided at length, and on initial impression, full of a sanctimonious piety that he was in dire need of having beaten out of him before very much longer.

It was, he decided, going to be a sincere pleasure.

"Jedi Bastila is commanding officer of this expeditionary force. She doesn't have time for meet and greet duties. As a mere observer out here, that job gets left to me." He favoured Jedi Tobin with a slanted smile. His voice seemed to be coming from a third person, entirely removed from him.

"General Ordo, it was made perfectly clear that our mission has the full authority of the Council behind it, and that Jedi Bastila was to cooperate with us fully. This is a matter of overriding urgency." The words came from Jedi Tobin's companion.

Canderous looked round at her with deliberate slowness, letting his gaze drop until it touched the top of her head, more than half a metre below Tobin's. He half-wondered if whoever had paired these two up had done it for a joke, but considering that person would have been Jedi too, it seemed unlikely.

"Well now, Jedi Zaerne." Dark haired, and with the kind of pristine prettiness that made Canderous think of a china doll, Zaerne reminded him ever so slightly of Bastila when he'd first met her back on Taris. She had the same armour of prissy perfection; the same uptight brittleness that suggested it masked deeper doubts and insecurities. "Did it occur to you that the rest of the galaxy might have its own matters of _overriding urgency_ to deal with, and unfortunately they might not fall perfectly into line with yours?"

It obviously hadn't, he saw from her reaction. He wondered briefly if this was the inevitable end product of the current Jedi training, before shoving the thought away as a heap of useless Bantha crap.

"Jedi Bastila will be informed of your arrival," he continued. His voice still didn't feel entirely like it belonged to him. It was difficult to be sure he was talking at the right pace. "And I'm sure she'll be eager to cooperate with you, just as soon as her schedule allows. In the mean time, I'll show you to your quarters. They should have cleaned the blood and blaster burns up by now, and if not . . . well adds character, doesn't it?"

As he turned, Jedi Zaerne made no move to follow, standing there with hands on hips as the wind stirred her robes around her. "I'm afraid that's not acceptable, General Ordo."

He squinted at her. "I wasn't being serious about the bloodstains."

"It is imperative that we see Jedi Bastila now," Jedi Tobin put in.

Canderous folded massively muscled arms across his chest. He let the surface of politeness fracture. "Now, I understood that patience was a virtue that the Jedi espouse. Did I mishear? Or has the Jedi Council taken to sending fidgety children with no interpersonal skills to do their dirty work?"

Neither of them rose to it. "Our orders are quite clear," Zaerne emphasised.

Canderous stifled a sigh. _Pair of fraking robots_ . . .. And much, much worse than Bastila had ever been, by the look of things. He touched his communicator. "Lieutenant Jansa. Bastila still with you?"

He made a show of listening to the pre-rehearsed response, keeping his thoughts carefully neutral. "Thank you Lieutenant. No, don't worry about it. It's not important." Then he turned his attention back to the pair of waiting Jedi Knights. "Sorry, you're out of luck. She's out somewhere in the woods right now. Isn't likely to be back for several hours."

"Can you contact her?"

"Got the impression she didn't want to be disturbed." He kept his tone flat. "Jansa says her communicator's switched off. Which means she's probably out at the Well, double checking something."

"Then perhaps you could have someone take us out to her?" Jedi Tobin suggested, frowning. He wasn't apparently one to let go of something easily. "Or at the least provide us with directions."

"No."

"General Ordo . . ." Jedi Zaerne started.

He cut her off. "Look, I've been patient up till now. Reasonable even. And you can ask anyone. They'll tell you I'm not remotely a reasonable man. You can fraking wait. The entire universe doesn't arrange itself for the Jedi Council's convenience. What's the urgency anyway? You here to arrest her or something? You think she's going to try and run away from you?"

Neither of them responded.

"So you can follow me to your quarters: settle in, relax. Extract those rods from up your arses. They can't be comfortable up there, surely? Beats a trip of several hours, by which time Bastila will have undoubtedly finished what she's doing and turned back, meaning we end up missing her anyway, and you end up taking twice as long before you get to see her, all for want of a bit of patience. Deal?"

Finally, though with evident reluctance, Zaerne nodded. They started walking, Canderous guiding them through the base's battle-damaged corridors.

"General Ordo," Tobin began stiltedly as they walked, breaking the silence. "You were one of those who accompanied Revan on the final assault against the Star Forge, were you not?"

"Yeah, that's right." Canderous wondered where this was going. "Funny. They say I'm a hero because of that. Gave me a medal; this pathetic honorary title; even built me a statue on Coruscant. Not a good likeness – I know I'm much more handsome than that – but hey, it's the thought that counts. I guess being a barbaric, murdering bastard is okay after all, just as long as it's your lot I'm being a barbaric, murdering bastard for. Sweet deal, eh?"

Jedi Tobin had gone a rather interesting shade of pale. "Erm, I just wanted to ask. What's Revan really like? I mean, you do know him?"

Canderous grunted. The same question he was always asked. "So you want to know what the man who slew your Jedi Council is like? The former Dark Lord of the Sith who saved, then nearly destroyed the Republic, then saved it all over again?"

"Whether he . . ." A small frown, before Tobin repeated Canderous's word, "_Slew_ the Jedi Council or not has yet to be determined. At the moment it is merely an allegation."

The response surprised Canderous slightly. It was the first hint he'd had that, inside Jedi Tobin, there lurked someone who might be capable of entertaining original thought and perhaps even open-mindedness. Finally he said, "He's a man. Like you. Like me. If the implication of you and me having something in common doesn't offend your sensibilities too much, Jedi. What other answer can I give? He's just a man."

Canderous half-expected to be pressed further _'no, but what's he _really_ like'_. Instead, Jedi Tobin nodded, his expression pondering, as if he'd just been given some kind of profound puzzle to think on by one of his Masters.

They arrived at the quarters Canderous had carefully arranged for them, far out of the way of the rest of the complex. "There you go. Make yourselves at home. Need anything, call on the intercom. I'd advise against wandering around at random, because sections of the base still haven't been made safe yet. But hell, your choice. As soon as Bastila returns, you'll be notified."

"Thank you, General Ordo." Jedi Zaerne sounded frosty, still apparently put out. She took the room on the left, the doors sliding shut behind her.

Canderous followed Jedi Tobin through into the room on the right. Tobin looked round at him in surprise.

"General Ordo?" He looked puzzled. "Is something the matter?"

Canderous didn't answer. Instead he hit him, hard and fast, before he had chance to react.

As Tobin's legs crumpled, Canderous pulled a disrupter collar from his pocket and clamped it shut around the Jedi's neck, switching it on. To be on the safe side, he then thumped him again, before proceeding to tie the man up with swift and brutal efficiency, wrenching legs and arms back behind him and securing them tightly together. For good measure, he taped up Tobin's mouth, then shoved the resulting package into a closet, out of sight.

The door whispered opened behind him.

It was Zaerne. "Is something wrong, Tobin? I thought I sensed something. It's so difficult with all this blasted interference . . ."

She trailed off as her eyes fixed on Canderous.

"Through in the bathroom," Canderous indicated with a jab of his thumb. "Had some more questions about Revan." A gruff headshake. "I sometimes wonder what the fascination is."

She nodded distractedly, clearly no more than humouring him. As she started to step past him, he saw her eyes widen and she started to whirl, reaching for the lightsaber hilt at her waist . . .

Too late.

There was a meaty thud as fist connected with jaw, and a short time later, there were two unconscious Jedi, trussed up like turkeys, wearing disruptor collars, and occupying closets.

As he walked out of there, Canderous used his comm. to put a call through to the current duty officer. "This is Ordo. I've settled our new Jedi guests in. Frak, they're a pair of cheery bastards, aren't they?"

The duty officer gave a wry answering chuckle. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Anyway, they've left strict instructions that they're not to be disturbed. Crap knows why. Maybe they're _special friends_, if you take my meaning, and need to get reacquainted." That drew another chuckle. "To be honest I don't give a damn, but I thought you'd appreciate the heads up."

He severed the connection before any answer came, and quickened his pace.

- - -

Yuthura finally looked round from the viewscreen at the sound of the doors opening behind her.

A few minutes ago, she'd watched them at long last draw clear of the Maw Cluster. It had taken more than twenty hours of painstaking sub-light flight through the turbulent, ever-shifting gravity tides – even slower than on the way in. Almost immediately, they'd made the leap to hyperspace, the stars and the black holes, with their gaudy Roche lobes of glowing, superheated gas, vanishing into dazzling lines. Eventually even that faded away to absolute blackness.

She'd been staring at that empty void ever since. Thinking.

_Brooding_, a wry inner voice corrected.

They were heading for Bothan space.

It was not a universally popular choice, given the Bothans' well-deserved reputation for never making do with one convoluted intrigue when they could have several dozen running concurrently.

In the end though, it had seemed the best of a bad lot. They needed to find somewhere relatively close by where they could dump the _Rancorous's_ crew – preferably somewhere the crew were reasonably happy at being dumped, so as not to unnecessarily risk provoking mutiny. That place also needed to be somewhere that was willing to welcome – or at least turn a blind eye to – the presence of a Hutt battlecruiser registered to an infamous crime lord, while still having enough in the way of anti-slaving regulations to allow them to make adequate provision for those that had been freed, without running the risk of them simply being recaptured and immediately resold. Taking all those contradictory concerns into account, the options dwindled rapidly.

And all that was forgetting their other, rather notable problems for the moment. It was difficult to shake off a feeling of profound pessimism about the whole business.

"Hello, Mission. Can I help you?" She tried to make her voice sound bright and friendly for the girl's benefit. To her own ears it came out closer to brittle and forced – quite the opposite of reassuring.

The girl's head tails twirled in manner that was probably supposed to look casual, but didn't quite manage to pull it off. Yuthura could sense her underlying nervousness. "Well, um, I was just passing, and well, I hadn't seen you around for a while, and, um, thought I'd stop by to see how you were. If you wanted anything. That sort of thing."

"I'm fine, Mission. Thank you for asking." She attempted a reassuring smile. It wasn't something that came naturally. "You can come in if you want to, you know. You don't have to keep hovering by the door."

"Um, yeah." The girl stepped inside tentatively, looking even more uncomfortable.

_Am I really that bad? That scary?_ The thought was a depressing one.

Mission walked across the room until she was standing next to her, in front of the view screen. Her posture was fractionally stiff, not quite at ease. "I also realised that I hadn't thanked you yet. And I should have done. So, thank you."

"Thank me?" That caught her completely unawares. It wasn't the sort of thing she knew how to respond to properly – no one thanked a slave, and the Sith didn't, in general, thank people.

"Well . . . you did just save all our lives, y'know."

Yuthura sighed softly. "Mission, I almost got you all killed. I was . . . stupid. I don't deserve your thanks for that."

Mission just shrugged. "The way I figure it, that's all just a matter of semantics, isn't it?"

Yuthura looked at the girl sidelong. "How do you mean?"

"Well you know. Like how 'almost lost' and 'won' are really just two different ways of saying the same thing." She shrugged. The edge of her nervousness seemed to fade as she spoke. "Almost got us killed. Saved us. It just depends whether you're a glass half-empty or glass half-full type of person. Me, I've always tried to see the glass half-full, 'cause . . . otherwise, well, I figure it might get pretty depressing." Her head tails flexed contemplatively. Abruptly, she looked up at Yuthura's face. "Anyway, how can you think any of what happened is your fault? We were the bunch of stupid nerfherders who blundered straight into Seboba's trap. All you did was rescue us."

Yuthura didn't answer right away.

"I mean, you took over an entire battlecruiser pretty much single-handedly. Even Cassus Fett could only manage a measly frigate, and he's like, this big-shot legend because of it. How damn cool is that?"

She couldn't help but smile slightly in response to Mission's enthusiasm, but it faded quickly. She shook her head. "No. I . . . lost sight of what was really important. I let myself feel hate and anger, and embraced those feelings; came very close to slipping back across a line into what I used to be. And after all I have done – all that I _know_ – that, for me, is absolutely inexcusable."

Mission was peering up at her. "But you didn't though. I mean, it's what you do that matters, right? Not what you think. Like, there've been times – a lot of times – when I've wanted to slap my brother, Griff, so hard his head tails fly off. But I don't act on that. Well, except this one occasion, but he was really asking for it, and well . . . I guess this isn't turning into such a good analogy, huh?"

Yuthura's smile was slightly broader and more definite this time. "You have a brother then?"

Mission rolled her eyes. "Believe me, you do not want to hear about Griff." She sighed, her gaze dropping. One foot idly traced a line back and forth on the plasteel floor. "A person has to make their own choices and decisions, right? You can't do that for them."

Yuthura nodded, head tails flexing in agreement.

Another sigh. "Griff's just Griff, and I've accepted that. I've just got to let him get on with his own life." Abruptly she brightened. "Anyway, Tamar's kind of like a big brother, and he's . . ." She trailed off abruptly. "You're not going to tell him, I said any of this, are you?"

"I promise I won't repeat a single word that you don't want me to."

She nodded, accepting. "Well he's been great. Really cool. Really helped me a lot. I mean half the time, he's too damned serious and needs to lighten up, like, _loads_, but he's been all the big brother I could ask for . . ." Again, she trailed to a halt, looking rather embarrassed. "Sorry, didn't mean to start babbling like that."

Yuthura blinked slowly, feeling absurdly touched and grateful. "Thank you, Mission."

"Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to be doing the thanking here. And . . . not only for what you just did, but for helping rescue me from Rath and the others. I owe you an apology too . . . for behaving like such a jerk and not trusting you when you were trying to help me."

"You don't have to apologise to me, Mission," she murmured. Her gaze moved back to staring out at the blank view screen. "You were completely right not to trust me. You didn't know me, and all you knew about me was that I used to be a Sith. I hadn't done anything to earn your trust."

"But the point is, you hadn't done anything to earn my distrust either. And if we all have to go around distrusting everyone till they do something to earn our trust . . . Well I'm not sure I like that version of the universe so much."

Yuthura closed her eyes. She felt infuriatingly close to tears, unable to stop herself from imagining what she would once have done to take advantage of that attitude.

"Yuthura? You all right?"

She nodded. "Yes, I'm fine."

There was a pause that started to grow slightly awkward.

"Um, tell me to get lost if I'm being nosey," Mission said eventually, breaking the silence. "But I kind of heard that you Tamar are, well, um, er . . . y'know."

That drew a trace of a smile. 'Well, um, er . . . y'know' seemed a perfectly apt description of the state of their relationship. "And Tamar told you this, did he?"

"I . . . more sort of overheard it. Not that I was eavesdropping," she hastened. "But if people do insist on talking so loudly . . ."

"You can hardly be expected to avoid hearing," Yuthura agreed, solemn.

"That's right. Glad you see it my way. Anyway, something that Jolee said kind of implied . . . And, well, Tamar didn't exactly deny it."

"Does the idea bother you?"

Mission's head tails flicked an immediate and emphatic negative. "No! That wasn't what I meant at all." She stopped abruptly, as if trying to work out what she had meant. "I guess I was kind of sad when I heard that things between him and Bastila hadn't worked out. I mean, it wasn't like her and me were best friends or anything. We irritated the hell out of each other most of the time to be honest. But I kind of think everyone deserves the chance to be happy, don't you?"

"You don't need that kind of relationship to be happy, Mission. You can find happiness equally well on your own."

"Well, yeah. Of course . . . I mean, I guess."

It didn't fit with the ideals of the holo-vids though, Yuthura thought dryly. In those, happily ever after never consisted of someone riding off into the sunset on their own, and romantic love was always so much deeper and more important than any other kind of relationship.

Finally, she nodded. "Yes, we are."

A bright grin slipped briefly through to the surface. "Uh-huh. That's . . . that's cool."

Silence fell between them, and Yuthura began to wish that she wasn't quite so chronically inept at making small-talk when it came to someone she actually liked. When it came to putting on a mask and lying through her teeth, she was up there with the best of them, but this . . . it left her grasping at empty air.

"So, um, I should probably go then. Leave you to . . . whatever." She stopped, before adding suddenly. "Say, do you play pazaak at all?"

Yuthura shook her head. "I've never learnt." Slaves . . . well, slaves didn't have the time, and Sith . . . their games tend to be much less pleasant and innocent pastimes than pazaak.

"Oh." She looked slightly crestfallen at that.

"Perhaps you could teach me though?"

Mission grinned, threading her fingers together and pressing her palms down so that her knuckles cracked. "Yeah. Yeah, I could do that."

- - -

"Fire." Darth Malefic gave a short, chopping signal with one red-gauntleted hand.

On the Excelsior's main viewscreen, Captain Bortha watched a silent volley of turbo-lasers, ion beams and photon torpedoes. Their synchronous detonations created a strange afterimage on his vision, but it was quickly wiped out as a second, then a third painstakingly choreographed sequence fired in quick succession.

When it was over, he didn't know what he'd expected to see, but it was something more than this. The display remained completely unchanged from prior to the attack sequences – utterly blank space, save for a faint backdrop of distant stars.

Around the bridge there was a collective sense of breath being held – of stillness before the coming storm. To have come so far to only end up here, deep in the interstellar void on the borders of the unknown regions, with absolutely nothing to show for it.

No one expected Darth Malefic to take it well. No one wanted to inadvertently make themselves the scapegoat.

But Malefic was simply standing there, stock still, a towering red-enamelled statue. The stillness was not natural. It was a concentrated stillness; a focussed stillness. Bortha found himself waiting expectantly – knowing that something was about to happen. Not knowing what.

Then, in the middle of the viewscreen, a spot of light flared. Somebody gasped.

Something opened. For a moment, it resembled a gigantic, glowing flower – a strange rose, petals opening from tight bud to full bloom in a few fractions of a second. That faded quickly, leaving behind what looked like the mouth of a perfectly circular tunnel, hanging directly in front of them.

"See, Bortha. Your doubts are unfounded," Malefic's voice murmured, just loud enough to carry to his ears, and his ears alone.

Bortha suppressed a shudder, wishing fervently that he had not managed to make himself so prominent in Darth Malefic's notice.

Abruptly, Malefic gestured towards the officer occupying the sensor position. "Lieutenant?"

"Readings show a . . . a spatial anomaly. Possibly some kind of wormhole, my Lord."

Bortha was not an astrophysicist, but he did know that wormholes did not just appear out of nowhere. Most especially, they did not just appear out of space that, a few minutes earlier, their sensors had shown to be completely featureless and empty. He felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickling.

"My personal shuttle has been prepared?"

"It awaits your command, my Lord."

"Good." Malefic turned slowly, until his gaze alighted on Captain's Bortha's first officer, Griggs. "As soon as we are clear, you will take the Excelsior out to a distance of six light hours and power down to minimum levels. Am I clear?"

"Aye, my Lord."

Bortha was just starting to wonder why the order had been directed towards Griggs instead of him, when Malefic turned abruptly and started striding from the bridge. "Bortha, you are with me."

He hesitated.

If there was one regulation out of all regulations that it had been drummed into Bortha that you didn't break, it was this one. The captain – acting or actual – did not leave a starship's bridge when it was operating at full alert status, no matter what the circumstances. It was so far ingrained that even the order of a self-proclaimed Dark Lord of the Sith didn't automatically countermand it inside his head.

Malefic stopped – looked back. Bortha found himself staring at the silver glow spilling from the visor of his crimson helmet. "You have a problem with this, Admiral? You do not wish to take the opportunity to personally inspecting your new fleet?" The voice sounded more amused than angry.

"Admiral?" Captain Bortha wondered if he'd misheard.

"Did I not mention your promotion, Admiral Bortha? Careless of me."

- - -

Bastila watched the assembled fleet with a growing feeling of tightness inside her chest. At her side, her hands clenched, knuckles white. With a deep breath, she tried to find focus – calm and serenity.

And, almost to her surprise, managed it. The knowledge that this was absolutely necessary was small comfort, but in the end, for all her many doubts, it was comfort enough.

She was peripherally aware of Captain Organa moving to stand behind her left shoulder – of a second set of footsteps that stopped several metres further back. They were familiar enough that she didn't need any force sense to know who they belonged to. _Canderous_.

Strangely, another comfort, knowing that he had her back. Once she would never have thought that remotely possible.

She turned around, acknowledging the Captain with a nod. "We are ready then?"

"We are. The expeditionary force awaits only orders to depart." There was a grimness about him, although she got the sense that beneath that hardened surface, tightly contained, he held nerves and fears of his own. That too, in a strange way, was comforting – that it wasn't just her, and others were able to cope well enough. "Jedi Tobin and Zaerne are not accompanying us then? I had assumed that was why they had been sent."

"Excuse me?" She tried to work out if she could have misheard him.

Captain Organa's surprise at her reaction was apparent. "The two Jedi who arrived to see you yesterday afternoon. They were absolutely adamant that they speak with you at the earliest opportunity. They claimed to be on an urgent mission on behalf of the Jedi Council, although they refused – politely, but in no uncertain terms – to reveal its purpose to me. I sent a message ahead, then put them on a shuttle down to the surface." He paused for a couple of beats. "You mean to say, you didn't speak to them?"

"I didn't even _know_ about them." Cold certainty filled her then. They hadn't been sent to aid her. They'd been sent to fetch her back – the naughty little girl who'd stayed out past her bedtime.

Abruptly she whirled on Canderous, connections sliding into place. Their conversation about force-adepts, and their ability to sense lies and intent, suddenly became blindingly clear. The bastard had intercepted Captain Organa's message.

Under her scrutiny, all he did was raise an eyebrow enquiringly.

"What, exactly, did you do to them?" She didn't bother trying to keep the acid edge from her voice. Inwardly, she was trying to put faces to names. For Tobin she had vague recollections of a very tall and serious looking man she'd seen around the halls of the Jedi temple on Coruscant. They'd never spoken. On Zaerne, she drew a complete blank.

"Let's see. Knocked 'em unconscious, fitted them with disrupter collars, tied them up and gagged them. Yeah, I think that pretty much covers it. I like to think I showed restraint." There was a sense of deep satisfaction about him as he said this.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, not knowing what to say. She tried again a moment later, to no better effect. "Why?" was the best she could manage.

His gaze was steely – completely unapologetic. "I figure it's my job to deal with complications."

"Complications?" There was an incredulous note to her voice. She was vaguely aware of it rising to a strident pitch and she struggled to rein the volume in. "Complications? What do you think you've just done? How, in the name of the force, do you think I can go about explaining this?"

"You don't have to explain it," he responded mildly. "I'm perfectly willing to stand up in front of this Council of yours and tell them what I did to their precious Jedi Knights. About how you had no prior knowledge of my actions, and how utterly appalled you were when you found out. What are they going to do to me? Take away my medal? Strip me of my honorary rank?"

"You are just . . ." Bastila shook her head. "You are just utterly impossible." There was a whole lot more invective she wanted to heap on him, but she was all too aware of their surroundings and the _Starlight __Phoenix__'s_ bridge crew looking on. She struggled to recover something approaching equilibrium, but her composure had been shattered.

"What would you have preferred to have happened?" he asked, implacable.

"Just about anything but this."

Canderous didn't give an inch. "You'd made your decision, hadn't you? That this new Council were too blinded by political troubles on Coruscant, and too distracted by the idea of Revan. That, not for the first time in the Jedi's history, they didn't appreciate the magnitude of the threat out here on the Outer Rim. You weren't going to change your mind, were you?"

"No." It was gritted through her teeth.

"So what would you have done when confronted by two Jedi sent to fetch you back? What would you do when they refused to be swayed by your arguments, and insisted on fulfilling their assigned mission to the letter? Because make no mistake, that's what these two would have done – inexperienced, inflexible and dogmatic: sound familiar? Would you have stood up to them, even when they tried to take you into custody? Would you have fought them? Or would you have gone meekly with them, leaving Darth Malefic to get what he wants, and this taskforce to get slaughtered, followed by who knows what else."

"It wouldn't have come to that," she said quietly.

"No? Well, now it can't come to that. Now you don't have to make those choices. As soon as you give the order for us to depart, I'll send a message to the surface and tell ground control where I stashed the pair of them. And it'll be done."

She stared at him. The bastard was actually pleased with himself. "I'm going to be expelled from the order for this."

He shrugged. "Maybe. But are you going to turn around, go back to the surface, go back to Coruscant and go back to being the Jedi's pretty little pet – a toy Jedi Knight of no use to anyone? Are you going to take the knowledge that the Vision Well implanted in your head, and your Battle Meditation, and leave us all to face Darth Malefic alone?"

Bastila let out a breath – screwed her eyes shut. "This isn't over Canderous." She was almost quivering with rage, but on one thing he was right – there was no turning back now.

Abruptly she span on heel and walked rapidly across to the helm where Captain Organa had quietly drifted to escape the fallout from their 'conversation'. "You have our destination programmed in, Captain?"

"That I do. The absolute middle of nowhere, exactly as specified."

She sensed the unspoken probe in Organa's words, but pretended that she hadn't. There was nothing more she could say about their destination that would make it seem any more logical. "Then you have my permission to depart in your own time."

- - -

It was a sobering spectacle, Bortha – _Admiral Bortha?_ Even the idea of that still bordered on the ridiculous, the unreal rantings of the purely deranged – thought as he looked out into the void.

And void it was.

It wasn't like the vast interstellar emptiness between stars. It was just . . . utter, unrelenting blackness entirely devoid of distant stars, or indeed anything else. The more rational parts of his brain were wondering if this was some kind of . . . hyperspace pocket perhaps? He wished briefly that his grasp of astrophysics was more solid, and he was more certain whether that was even a possibility. Underneath the brittle surface calm, his instincts prickled, filling him with a mounting disquiet – a sense of utter alien _wrongness_.

In this void, spreading out beneath the slow, sedate seeming flight-path of their shuttle, were the ships – the fleet that Darth Malefic had mentioned.

The fleet he was, notionally, now admiral of.

They seemed to be split between two different but familial designs. Those in the centre – the main body of the fleet – over which they now passed, were exceeding familiar to someone who had served as commanding officer of the _Excelsior_ for slightly over two years now. Familiar but not quite the same, broader and flatter, the curves of their sleek black flanks noticeably more bulbous and pronounced. These small differences aside, they were obviously equivalent vessels to the _Excelsior_ – top line battlecruisers of supreme deadliness.

A variant design that Revan had never had the chance to press into service, he wondered. Was this what it was all about? A weapon that Revan had been preparing to unleash upon the galaxy, lost when Malak sprung his ambush and struck his master down.

Somehow, though, that didn't quite ring true.

Surrounding these almost familiar vessels, were a design of ship that Bortha hadn't seen before. Around 40 smaller, flatter and significantly more streamlined, without the prominent bridge and command structures rising from the rear of their upper levels, they resembled nothing quite so much as black scalpel blades.

Destroyers, he decided at length, designed to run with a significantly lower complement, and far less in the way of fighters and planetary attack forces on board, but still maintaining similar levels of raw gunpower to their larger sisters. It was just a guess though. He had no way of knowing for sure.

It occurred to him to wonder – faint ticklish doubt – how he could actually see all this, given that there didn't appear to be any light sources in the surrounding black vastness.

"Well, Admiral? What are your thoughts?"

Darth Malefic's voice, originating from close behind him, made Bortha jolt to an embarrassing degree. For all his size and heavy armour, the Sith Lord was capable of moving astonishingly quietly when it suited him. Or perhaps it was simply that he could make a person forget they'd ever heard him.

He tried to choose his answer carefully, in the process of attempting to come up with a rough count of the number ships in his head. _225?_ Approximately that many, provided there weren't more of them beyond the range of his sight.

"Were we to have means of crewing them all, the impact of so many new capital ships would be immense. I'm not aware of any single fleet currently in Republic, Sith, or other hands that could match it." Bortha kept his voice – and hopefully his thoughts – neutral.

Malefic, chuckled, the sound dry and rasping, subtly distorted through his helmet. "I detect a rather large caveat in your words, Admiral Bortha."

"Even if we don't have means to crew them all, having that many Star Forge constructed vessels in reserve gives a significant tactical advantage," Bortha noted. "Although I am . . . curious as to why you had the battle group remain behind, my Lord. More men would certainly have expedited our laying claim to the ships and moving them." Presuming they were in working order at all. As it was, it was likely to take weeks – maybe longer still.

His enthusiasm levels for the task hovered around the zero level. Admiral to a useless fleet. He supposed that, from the outside, it might look like a good joke.

Another chuckle. "You think me an idiot, don't you?"

Bortha went abruptly cold. A bead of sweat slid down the side of his face and it was difficult, suddenly, to draw breath.

"You don't have to deny it, Bortha. You fear me. That much, I can feel. But you fear me as some kind of brute – an animal, who unaccountably holds your reins and guides you, though it has not the wit to do so."

It was, Bortha thought desperately, best to remain silent. There was nothing he could say that couldn't be used to condemn him.

"Do you really think, Admiral," Malefic continued, "that if I had wanted merely to acquire ships, I wouldn't simply have raided a shipyard somewhere? Do you really think I would have spent so much time and energy acquiring something that I couldn't hope to put to immediate effective use?"

To be honest, Bortha had been assuming more or less exactly that.

"Behold, the Living Fleet of the Rakatan. If you could only sense what I do, Admiral, you would not now be so sceptical."

_Living fleet?_ "I'm not certain I understand, my Lord. You're saying that all these ships . . . they're alive somehow?"

"In the same manner that the Star Forge was alive." Malefic was wearing his crown once more, atop his crimson helm. The spikes glittered with far more light than was currently available to reflect. Bortha felt his flesh creeping as he looked at them sidelong. "As I look out of this viewport I see not a multitude of separate vessels, but a vast connecting web of force conjoined into a single greater entity."

"And this allows them to be . . . operated without crew, my Lord?" He couldn't mask the dubiousness in his voice.

"Not _entirely_ without crew. One strong in the force must join with the fleet to activate and direct it, and a skeleton bridge crew, at the least, is required on board each ship for them to truly operate at their fullest capacity. But no more than five thousand men in total. Think on that, Admiral. A fleet of more than two-hundred capital ships being crewed by the same number of people normally required to operate but a single battlecruiser."

It sounded incredible. Too incredible. The shuttle seemed to be steering right for a particular ship at the dead centre of the surrounding fleet. It looked to be somewhat larger than the surrounding vessels, though not quite on the scale of either the _Leviathan_ or the _Firebrand_ – Malak and Revan's flagships, respectively. Bortha guessed that it served exactly the same purpose as those two vessels though. "What of matters like fighters and gunnery, my Lord?"

"Automated."

Bortha grimaced. Drone fighters were all very well for protecting an asteroid mining facility from pirate attack, but put them against an elite Republic fighter squadron and they'd be lucky to sell themselves ten for one.

"Not mindless drones, admiral. Nothing so crude. They are automated via the force."

The explanation did little to quiet Bortha's doubts. He'd seen far too much of the force during recent years to doubt its existence, but he didn't remotely trust it. As far as he could tell, everyone who came to rely on it, Jedi or Sith, met a bad end, usually taking anyone standing too close along with them. "And Revan created this fleet my lord? Before his . . ." He groped for the correct word. "Downfall?"

"Revan?" The sound that came from inside Malefic's helm was perhaps a contemptuous snort. "No, Admiral, Darth Revan may once have discovered this fleet, but he didn't create it, nor even, in the end, put it to use. As I said, this is the _Rakatan_ Living Fleet. It is far older than either the Sith or the Republic civilisations."

_Great. An antique_. "And they are still in working order, after all that time?"

"The Star Forge was in full working order, was it not? The force preserves and sustains them, and this void keeps out agents of aging and decay." Through the viewport, the fleet flagship now occupied almost the entire view, darkly gleaming – sinister.

After several seconds of silence, staring at the growing ship, Malefic spoke again, voice soft. "The tale of their creation is an interesting one. Would you care to hear it, Captain?"

"My Lord." Bortha inclined his head and decided to let Malefic take that however he chose to.

He apparently took it as an affirmative. "According to documentation discovered within the Star Forge's computers, the Living Fleet was not constructed by Rakatan high command, as all other Rakatan military vessels were. After all, the Rakatan navy always had ample manpower at their disposal and, with the Star Forge, more ships than they could ever want, so why would they need to construct what you see before you now?"

The question was rhetorical, Bortha sensed, not interrupting.

"Instead, it was the creation of a rebellious Rakatan general, who plotted coup against his masters. This general had neither enough men nor ships of his own to mount a campaign against the entire sum of Rakata's military might, but he was driven by a consuming need for vengeance, and was not about to let such meagre consideration stymie him.

"After several years of painstaking work, building up his powerbase and putting the cogs of his plan in motion, the general finally managed to pull enough strings and peddle enough influence to get himself assigned to the Star Forge in an overseer role. There, with the aid of a senior scientist of surpassing genius sympathetic to his cause, he gradually siphoned off resources, altering design templates, scheduling 'classified' production runs and building up a secret fleet to his own meticulously exacting specifications. A blazing sword of retribution and fury, fit to decapitate high command in a single stroke, as he described it.

"That fleet was a masterwork, and had he been able to put it to use, the general might well have succeeded in his goal. Alas, when the time came, he was betrayed from within by one of his own lieutenants, just as he sparked his great rebellion to life. Captured and convicted of treason, the general was sentenced to have his consciousness separated from his flesh and bound to dwell, eternally alone, within a punishment box – a fate the Rakata regarded as far worse than simple death.

"Even under force interrogation and torture, however, he refused to reveal his hidden fleet's location before the punishment was enacted. No one else was able to find it, and believe me; it was searched for. Eventually it faded into the realms myth."

Bortha digested this. It did absolutely nothing to assuage his deep unease "And Revan managed to uncover this fleet, all these thousands of years later."

"Indeed."

In front of them, the side of the Rakatan flagship now loomed like a glass-smooth, gently curving metal cliff face, stretching as far in every direction as they could see. Bortha could feel the shuttle decelerating gradually around him, the entrance to a landing bay opening up before them like an enormous, devouring metal maw, ready to swallow them. Inside, he could see nothing but absolute darkness.

"I'm surprised that Revan didn't try to use this fleet, if he knew about it," Bortha said after several seconds of lingering hesitation. Too much felt wrong about the situation for him to remain completely silent, even out of the desire for self-preservation.

"Are you, Admiral?"

"Well . . . it seems too useful a weapon for him to simply sit on or ignore."

"Does it?" Malefic seemed dryly amused as much as anything. "You have to remember that he discovered it near concurrently with the Star Forge. I'm sure that he viewed this as very much a secondary prize in comparison."

"Even so, it was surely worth his trouble. This many ships, with, as you say, only the need for skeleton crews to operate them . . ." And if Revan had possessed so many extra ships to call on, the odds were that the war would already have been won well before Malak moved to overthrow him.

"The fleet has not been left completely unprotected by its creator, Admiral. I have read a report written by Revan's head of intelligence operations at the time. It details concentric layers of defences that are formidable to say the very least. And it seems that Revan may not have appreciated his find's true significance until much, much later on."

Bortha remained silent, watching as they flew serenely into the huge vessel. The only source of illumination came from their shuttle's own exterior lighting, creating an impression that was distinctly eerie – flying into a gaping abyss; the belly of a gigantic metal whale. So they were, in fact, planning to penetrate the defences of something that even Darth Revan had apparently not been able to. His feelings about the whole situation were becoming more pessimistic by the instant.

"Revan was just a man." It was almost as if Malefic read his thoughts. "His true power always lay in psychology rather than the force or strength at arms. In comparison to the myths people carry around in their heads, the reality was disappointingly mundane. He was a long way from the darkly infallible genius most recall him as."

Bortha sensed an edge of bitter jealously there – a subject he would do well not to pursue. Inside, he wondered what was more likely – that the entire fleet was completely inoperative, beyond salvage, and this was a complete waste of time, or if some more active kind of doom lay in wait for them amidst the darkness.

The shuttle stopped moving and settled gently to the floor. There was a soft metallic clunk.

"Much as I have enjoyed this conversation, it now must cease." The sense of relief as Malefic turned and walked away was immense. Bortha could feel his legs suddenly shaking with it. "I suggest you prepare yourself, Admiral. This is not likely to be a gentle stroll."

A few minutes later, he was lining up by the shuttle's exit ramp. A double squad of elite Sith troopers, armoured in red to match their dark lord, stood arrayed in front of him. With them were a pair of towering battle droids, gleaming and deadly. Then came the four Dark Jedi; grim crows flanking Darth Malefic's towering, becrowned figure. Finally there was himself, dressed in armour the likes of which he hadn't worn in more than a decade.

At his side stood another Dark Jedi, who Malefic had assigned as his personal bodyguard. Her name was Illarie. If it wasn't for the shaved head, the mask of purple and black tattoos covering her otherwise pale face, and the studs of either sharpened bone or horn that pierced through her cheeks, she might almost have been pretty. Her contempt for him, and the demeaning role she had been assigned, was unspoken but impossible to miss.

The ramp lowered. The Sith troopers moved out on the double, heavy repeaters carried at the ready.

Even as they stepped out into the landing bay, the darkness erupted in light and noise and fury

- - -

Tamar sensed Yuthura's approach, and knew that she was aware of his presence in turn. The delay before the door opened was fractionally prolonged, suggestive of her hesitation.

When she entered, her answer to his smile of greeting was tentative and faded quickly. "I think I might have been avoiding you," she said after a moment's uncomfortable pause. She walked over to a chair and sat down. It seemed to take a special effort on her part, as if at least part of her wanted to turn around and flee.

"Why?" he asked softly. The admission surprised him more than the avoidance.

Her head tails flexed in a manner that he thought indicated that she was deep in thought. Eventually she said, "No remotely good reason."

"What about bad reasons?"

"Oh yes, plenty of those." The wry smile faded as quickly as the first one had. "Shame, mostly, I think. Not wanting to look into your eyes in case I saw disappointment there."

"Yuthura . . ." he started.

She closed her eyes. "Please, Tamar, don't." There was a pause. "And yes, I realise that any disappointment would simply be my own, reflected back at me." She sighed. "I thought I'd come further than that. I thought I was . . . better now. I suppose that a proper Jedi would probably be grateful for having their arrogance and self-deceiving folly revealed to them."

"I think that 'proper Jedi' of that sort are largely a myth. Want to talk . . .?"

"Mission's been a great help pulling me out of my self-indulgent pit of crapulence." A third smile, pale and wan though it was, lingered slightly longer than the first two. "And yes, we probably do need to talk. But for now can we both pretend we know exactly what needed to be said, and have had that conversation already, and then move on from there?"

After a moment, he nodded. "Yes, I think we can manage that."

"Good." She tilted her head back, head tails dangling down behind her. Abruptly she started laughing. "You know, I have no clue what's actually remotely funny here."

"You've been with the released slaves?" he asked after some time had passed.

She nodded slowly, something flickering in her eyes. Her head tails had gone too still for it to be entirely natural. "I think that at least half of them now hate me far more than they ever did Seboba."

He tried to tell if she was joking. The impression he got was that she wasn't. "You're not serious?"

She shrugged, the gesture taking in both shoulders and lekku. "They didn't ask to be rescued, you know."

"But still . . ."

"You have to remember that a majority of them have been slaves for the larger portion of their lives. They don't know anything else, and the thought of freedom scares them." A grimace twisted her face. Angry with herself for ever believing it might be otherwise, he thought. "And when it comes to it, Seboba was a lot more intelligent than Omeesh ever was." She let out a pent-up breath. "He might have been just as cruel and sadistic as my old owner, but he used it in a . . . different way. Some of them . . . loved him I suppose, twisted as that seems. In their eyes, he treated them with kindness, a benevolent master sheltering them from the infinite cruelties of the outside world. If he was harsh now and again, it was only because he cared for them so deeply. I had the temerity to steal that away. Some of them – Nebri, Valouise – will seek to kill me the first opportunity they get, and gladly sacrifice there own lives for the chance to do so."

He stared at her.

"They hate the way I once hated. Only the direction is different." She groaned, hands coming up to briefly cover the lower half of her face as she tilted her head back and stared up at the ceiling.

"That will change in time, you know," he said quietly. "When the healing process starts . . ."

She looked back at him sharply. "There are some wounds that don't heal, Tamar. Not ever. I think you know that just as well as I do. You should do, anyway."

Eventually he nodded – not quite agreement, but acknowledgement of her point of view. "Perhaps you should ask Shiia-Na how she feels about what you've done for her. Get some balance." Shiia-Na was the Togruta she'd freed.

Yuthura didn't say anything. He wanted to cross to her; to hold her – wanted that so much it hurt inside. But he got the strong sense she was too prickly and on edge; too protective of her personal space, which he knew was of paramount importance to her.

"I actually came to see you for a reason. Not just to see how you were." He kept his voice businesslike, sensing that right now she would appreciate that far more than anything that might even hint at commiseration or sympathy, or anything like that.

"Oh?"

"I need your help." He indicated the bag resting on the chair beside him. "That contains about two dozen datapads. They've got copies of all the useful data that T3 managed to retrieve from Auza's datacore on them."

"A bit of light bedtime reading then," Yuthura said dryly.

"Something like that," he agreed. A hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "We've been going about this all wrong." After moment, he amended: "_I've_ been going about this all wrong."

She sat forward in her chair. "How so?"

He shook his head. "You remember Korriban? Those long, late-night games of chess we spent plotting and scheming." A tiny hint of a smile touched his lips. "At the time I did wonder why it all came so naturally to me. Not something that a simple soldier from Deralia should be so . . . adept at."

Her gaze dropped, seemingly studying the backs of her hands. Her voice was quiet. "It's not the sort of thing I'm likely to forget, Tamar."

"Since Dantalus – since our meeting with Darth Auza – all we've been doing is reacting to circumstances. Chasing shadows; being chased. That has to change."

"It's hardly been by choice, you know. We've done what was necessary simply to survive. It's not like there's been an excess of time for anything else."

He nodded. "I don't disagree. But it still has to change, and it has to start changing now. We need to start acting instead of reacting." He gestured at the bag of datapads. "We need to find something in there, and more importantly, we need to find a way to use it. We need to find a way to make _her_ sweat. Draw her out. Make her the one who's dancing to avoid traps. Not us. Make her the one who's reacting to us rather than vice versa."

A head tail angled in a manner that Tamar had come to know as the equivalent to a raised eyebrow. "And that will be easy, will it?"

"No," he said after a short pause. "No, I think it will be exactly the opposite of easy. But that doesn't change the fact we need to do it. Or the fact that I will need your help if it's going to be remotely possible." His gaze locked with hers. "The help of everything that you are."

For a moment, her expression was entirely blank. Then a sharp-toothed grin flowered. "Pass it over here then." She extended a hand to him, towards the bag. As soon as she had it, she opened it, delving inside. "How are the files arranged on here?"

"Chronologically by directory."

She grunted, dividing the datapads into two lots and passing half back to him. "Better get started then, hadn't we?"

Tamar wasn't quite sure how much time had passed when his comm. beeped. It was one of the bridge crew. "A recorded message has just arrived for you, Jedi De'Nolo. It's flagged as urgent."

Something tensed inside him. "What name is it addressed to?"

"Um, both of them. Jedi Knight Tamar De'Nolo; Revan."

The only people outside of the _Rancorous_ who should know his current location were Rath Gannaya and Dreya's Bastion. Of course, he realised with a slow sinking feeling that information could have spread by now, like a rapidly mutating virus . . . "Who's it from?"

"The identity tags have been . . . obscured.

Figured. "Does it have holo? If so, put it through to the console in Yuthura Ban's quarters. Otherwise play it over this link."

A few seconds later, the console activated and the head and shoulders of a grey-skinned Rodian appeared, floating above it. Just for a moment, he thought it might have been Suvam Tan, possibly with a rather belated warning about Defels.

Then he looked more closely. It wasn't Suvam, but it was someone else he was familiar with.

"Hulas," he murmured beneath his breath.

The holo started to speak.

- - -

Finally, after the best part of two days of near continuous fighting, there was a lull. To Bortha it seemed unreal, the silence impossibly huge and – paradoxically – loud in contrast to the prior cacophony.

The droids had come at them right from the outset, and they had come in thick waves, their onslaught relentless. He'd lost count of the numbers after the first ten minutes, blaster fire filling the air like rainfall in a lashing storm. Lightsabers flashed; force lightning crackled, and it had been ceaseless. Forward progress became measured in the handfuls of metres a minute, painstakingly slow.

That when they weren't being forced into rapid retreat, or hopelessly pinned down.

And in the brief periods when the intensity of the droid attacks did drop off, there had been very little chance of respite. During these spells they'd had to deal with the traps – far more deadly and insidious than simple droid attacks.

Now, though, felt slightly different. Several minutes had passed since the last blaster shot was aimed their way, and more importantly, the entire quality of their surroundings had changed. The ribbed, curving corridors – completely unlike the interior of the Star Forge vessels Bortha was familiar with, which were much more human in aesthetic – had opened out around them into a vast-seeming open space.

They must have been somewhere near the heart of the ship. Literally the heart of the ship perhaps. To Bortha it felt like they were tiptoeing through an immense cathedral in the middle of the night.

The lights they carried barely reached the curving metal walls on either side, and the ceiling disappeared from view somewhere high overhead. That had been another problem – the lack of light. Although the ship was obviously running at least back-up power – doors operated, lifts worked, and there was certainly enough juice available to operate the multifarious traps – the lights were off and there was no obvious way of turning them on. Added to the fact that neither the attacking droids, nor the traps, showed up particularly well in infrared, and it all started to get more than a bit unpleasant.

A dozen metres ahead, Darth Malefic, flanked by two of the surviving Dark Jedi, signalled a halt.

Getting this far had cost six Sith troopers and a pair of Dark Jedi their lives. In the circumstances, Bortha thought sourly, they'd probably gotten off lightly. There'd been times during the past interminable hours when he'd been certain that they were all going to die, pretensions of being Dark Lord of the Sith or otherwise. He still didn't believe they were remotely safe.

In fact, he had a nagging sense that this was simply the calm before an even greater storm.

The image of Alok Zar – a Zabrak Dark Jedi – leading the way down a seemingly empty section of corridor, then stopping abruptly in his tracks with a comically surprised look on his face, was something that would haunt him for a long, long time. A fraction of a second later, the Zabrak had slid to the floor, separated neatly into six pieces. There had been surprisingly little blood.

The cause had been near invisible monomolecular-filaments strung across the corridor at random heights and intervals. Alok Zar had managed to blunder through three of them before he'd noticed anything was wrong, cutting straight through upper-chest, mid thigh and ankles as if they weren't there. For all the horror, there had been an absurdly comedic element to it.

As he got nearer to Malefic, he stopped, scarcely noticing as the surviving troopers moved to establish a perimeter.

The back wall of the chamber loomed out of the darkness in front of them. It was a dense, tangled web of pipes, cables and filaments, woven together to cover all the surface of the wall that he could see. The patterns of this complex, intricately twisted and intertwining mass had a strange splendour, resembling in its complexity something that had grown over thousands of years rather than being built, for all the obvious artificiality of its nature.

As he stared at it, Bortha half expected to see it slowly moving, alive as a nest of mating serpents.

This entire tangle converged on a point directly in front of them. Here, half-embedded in the greater mass, was a structure that resembled a humanoid-shaped cage shaped out of strips of darkly gleaming metal. It reminded Bortha slightly of a high-tech version of an ancient torture device – an iron maiden, he thought it was called. The occupant – if it was intended to be occupied – would be held, securely pinned in cruciform.

"At last," Bortha heard Malefic breathe.

"What is it, my Lord?" That was one of the Dark Jedi. Kassar, Bortha thought his name was.

"It is what we seek: the nerve centre of this place. Can you not feel it? The way the force flows around us like rivers of molten lava."

Bortha could certainly feel his flesh crawling. Of the force, he had no clue.

"I . . . I feel it, master." The sudden, sheer exultation in Kassar's voice was, Bortha thought, overdone by several orders of magnitude. "It is . . . it is _incredible!_"

"Indeed." Bortha recognised a certain dryness to the Dark Lord's tone. He watched as Malefic stepped forward, closer to the strange cage.

For a moment the giant, red-clad figure stood in front of it, head slightly dipped in a manner that suggested he was listening to something. Then he extended a hand and touched something that Bortha couldn't see. There was a whisper-soft hissing sound and the front of the cage came open.

Malefic turned back to look at Kassar. "Whoever occupies this cradle joins not only with this ship, but the entire fleet around us. Effectively, they become part of the fleet, and the fleet becomes part of them. A symbiotic relationship."

"It is fascinating, master."

As he looked on, Bortha's throat felt dry.

"Isn't it just? Would you care to be the first to try it out, Kassar?"

Kassar's mouth opened, then closed again without producing sound. Abruptly he dropped onto one knee before Darth Malefic, his head bowed. "You honour me more than I could possibly imagine, my Lord."

"I should warn you, Kassar. It is supposed to require a considerable amount of power for the ship to accept you. The chance I offer is not without risk, and you are taking a step – for all the knowledge I have – across the boundaries of the unknown."

"I am not afraid, my Lord."

"Of course you are not." Amused contempt, Bortha thought. "You may still back out if you wish. You will face no sanction if that is your choice."

But of course, it was utterly impossible for Kassar to back out. Even without the strangely avid gleam in the Dark Jedi's eyes – thoughts of prestige gained, no doubt.

Arms outstretched to either side, Kassar stepped back into the embrace of the cage – or cradle, as Malefic had called it. The look on his face was exultant as the metal closed around him, locking him in a tight embrace.

"All you need to do is start to channel the force through your flesh. The ship itself should guide you from there."

But Kassar apparently didn't need those words, already doing as Malefic said before he'd finished speaking. Bortha watched with a kind of dread fascination.

Kassar's eyes slid shut. The mass of cables and filaments surrounding him seemed to move – no, definitely moved – writhing and twisting like the mass of snakes Bortha had imagined earlier. A fraction later, Kassar made a quiet groaning noise that sounded almost orgasmic. Wide-eyed, Bortha realised that several of the finer filaments were wrapping round him, even piercing and joining with his flesh.

The groan became louder. Pale ghost-lights began to flicker and crawl across the walls, and the air around Bortha started to feel thick and heavy, loaded with . . . something. Swallowing, he took an involuntary step backwards. No one else appeared to notice though, too busy staring at the scene playing out in front of them.

Abruptly Kassar's eyes snapped open again. They seemed to be staring off into a distance that only he could see, oblivious to everything around him. His mouth worked. "I can . . . I can _see_. I can see everything. Feel _it_ . . . inside me."

"Fascinating," Darth Malefic intoned hollowly. "Now, perhaps you can do something about turning off the defence systems and switching on the lights?"

Another groan was wrenched from Kassar's lips. "The defences are . . . there is no off, but they . . . recognise us now, my Lord." Suddenly, he seemed to be in pain. Bortha could see sweat beading on his face, little tremors shaking through him.

"Excellent."

Then the lights came on. It was gradual – so gradual that, for the first few seconds, it seemed to be nothing more than overactive imagination – but within about a minute it was bright enough to see the curving walls on either side, and, finally, the ceiling high above them. The impression of a cathedral, the cradle surrounding Kassar its bizarre altar, was only reinforced.

"Very good, Kassar." Malefic sounded amused again, but also perhaps slightly disturbed, as if he hadn't expected the Dark Jedi to be able to master things so readily. As if he'd expected the ship to reject, or at least resist him. "Now, perhaps you can pull up information on the fleet's current operational status – any damage, and so forth."

"M-my Lord." The shaking appeared to be getting worse, and the sweat was truly dripping now. "So big. It is _alive_. It is."

"I had something slightly more detailed in mind than, _alive_, Kassar. Please do try to concentrate."

Face greasy, Kassar managed to nod. Bortha saw him try to swallow, but it turned into what looked like strangled choking, a line of drool spilling from one corner of his mouth. He got it under control after about thirty seconds, but he didn't look to be in pain now so much as agony.

Malefic made a noise that sounded like exasperation. "Withdraw, Kassar. It is obviously too much for you. Disconnect, and step out of the cradle."

For a moment, Bortha thought that Kassar was going to be stupid enough to demure. But he managed another nod several very long seconds later.

And then, suddenly, the Dark Jedi screamed.

It was a shockingly loud, raw sound, and Bortha was startled into taking several rapid backwards steps before he got a hold of himself. Next to him, Illarie's normally hard, sneering surface – already somewhat fractured from the constant attrition of the past day or so – cracked entirely, for a few short seconds at least. Her eyes looked wild.

"_I can't! I can't! I can't! It won't let me!"_ Quickly even that small amount of coherence was overwhelmed, and the scream resumed, rising to ear-splitting intensity.

The air wasn't just heavy any more; it was crackling. The flickering ghost-lights crawling across the wall behind Kassar grew brighter and brighter, until Bortha finally had to flinch away, negative neon afterglow burnt into his retinas. Just as surely, the image of Kassar thrashing and twisting violently, attempting to rip himself bodily from the cradle, had burnt itself into his mind's eye.

The screaming dissolved into a ragged, animalistic howling, before finally losing even that much coherence as something inside Kassar's throat seemed to break. There was a spitting, hissing noise; a hideous wet tearing, and the acrid smell of something organic burning. Bortha was dimly aware of gritting his teeth so hard he was in danger of grinding them to stumps.

Briefly, the scream rose again in an unstructured shrieking wail, before suddenly there was a _snap-hiss_ – Malefic's double-bladed lightsaber igniting. A moment later, the humming _swoosh_ of a single emphatic saberstroke.

And then, mercifully, silence.

Bortha's ragged breathing sounded loud to his own ears. Gulping air into his lungs, he forced himself to open his eyes again.

Darth Malefic had opened the cradle again, and was peering at what it now contained. Bortha received an impression of something raw and burned – an overcooked side of meat – giving off tendrils of grey-white steam. At that point, he decided that he really didn't need to see any more closely than he already had.

"Interesting," Malefic finally murmured, pulling back from Kassar's remains and breaking the dreadful silence. "Obviously he lacked the power he thought he possessed. A pity. Does anyone else want to try?"

The lack of response was echoing.

"No takers?" Malefic's amusement was palpable. "Never mind. I will remember your collective courage well. My _true_ apprentice should be arriving shortly though. Hopefully she will fare rather better."

- - -

"A wormhole," Captain Organa stated, finally breaking the silence. "I presume that this is what we're looking for?"

Bastila simply nodded, staring at it. There was nothing else of note in this volume of space, and the wormhole – if that was truly what it was: sensor readings were slightly ambiguous on that precise point – was in exactly the location her vision had suggested it should be.

Looking at it, other knowledge she hadn't known she'd possessed flickered from the depths. How you were supposed to open it. How you closed it again.

A shudder passed through her.

The tension on the bridge around her was palpable. She could feel it from all sides, claustrophobic, amplifying her own darker feelings, which she was struggling to keep in check. There had been no Sith fleet waiting for them as they'd expected, but it hadn't come as a relief to anyone. Almost the opposite in fact.

"Looks like we're late again," Canderous muttered.

"That happens too many times and it starts to get unfashionable," Organa added wryly

It was hard to disagree with their assessment. The chances of them having gained enough ground on Darth Malefic as to have overtaken him and arrived here first seemed vanishingly small. _And if we'd got here first, the wormhole shouldn't be open_, the knowledge that wasn't hers and that she shouldn't have, whispered to her.

She frowned, concentrating hard to block out any surrounding distractions. There was something . . . something . . .. Her eyes lost focus on what was in front of her, all sense of time and surroundings phasing out.

Canderous was peering at her closely, his gaze questioning. Almost to her surprise, she was still upright. "Decide to leave us for a second there, Princess? Don't really blame you."

She tried to sort through her thoughts. She could feel her heart thudding, far too fast and hard. "There's something in there," she finally managed. "I felt . . . a disturbance in the force." Ripples of pain – of unrelenting agony – abruptly cut off by different, darker ripples. Death. She nodded at the viewscreen. "There. Through there. There's someone still inside."

No one said anything right away.

"You're certain?" Organa finally asked.

"Absolutely." She couldn't take her eyes from the screen. She could still feel faint, demented ripples, and something else . . . something strange and alien that seemed to have, just that instant, woken up from a long slumber.

A shudder passed through her. Finally, she managed to tear her gaze away. "Have an armed shuttle prepped. I want a commando team readied to accompany myself and General Ordo. We're going in." She turned on heel abruptly and started to walk from the bridge.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Captain Organa asked after her.

Bastila looked back at him; took a deep breath. "When I become remotely 'wise', Captain, I'll be certain that you're the first to know."

- - -

Cloaking technology had never, for all there had been hundreds of years of research into it, proved to be as useful in practice as it seemed it should be in theory.

The big show-stopper of a problem with it, that no one had so far been able to successfully address, was the fact that when a cloaking device was up, it prevented anyone on the inside seeing out just as surely as it prevented anyone on the outside seeing in. Switch it on, and a spaceship effectively became completely blind to the universe as well as invisible. Which was extraordinarily dangerous if you had hopes of moving anywhere while cloaked.

Add to that the fact that it was still possible to detect a starship's drive emissions, even when it was cloaked, and you had a device where the drawbacks seemed to thoroughly outweigh the advantages.

The Republic expeditionary force, with their sensors trained on the worm hole in front of them, were certainly not on the look out for a cloaked ship moving among them. That, conventional wisdom dictated, should have been impossible.

Impossible, that is, other than for a highly skilled pilot who was capable of sensing beyond the confines of their own vessel and through the surrounding cloaking field via the force.

The cloaked ship was only just larger than a hyperspace capable fighter, manoeuvring invisibly through their neatly arrayed formations, going so slowly that any emissions it gave off were strictly minimal and masked to a greater degree by the Republic vessels surrounding it.

There was only a single person on board that ship: the pilot. After many painstaking minutes, it finally broke clear of the surrounding Republic vessels with not one of them remotely the wiser to its presence.

It flew, steadily and surely, towards the mouth of the wormhole, trailing closely behind a heavily armed shuttle launched from the expeditionary force's flagship – the _Starlight Phoenix_.


	14. Cold and Bitter Fusion

**14. Cold and Bitter Fusion**

The sandstorm showed no sign of abating. But then, sandstorms like these were known to last for months on end on Nawathwai, often growing to encompass the entire surface of the planet, swirling through the thin, oxygen-poor atmosphere like a great red veil.

Fine red grit was slowly accumulating in the eyepieces of Tamar's breath mask, and he had to pause briefly – not for the first time in the past couple of hours – to wipe them clean before it rendered him completely blind. More of the grit had managed to find its way through the top layer of his loose fitting robes, and had now worked its way inside his armour, chafing uncomfortably.

In a contest to find the absolute ass-end of nowhere, he reflected, Nawathwai could give even Tattooine a good run for its money.

He pressed on through narrow streets, the wind not so much howling as whining incessantly.

Overhead, the skeletal ribs of an unfinished dome arched high above the planet's capital 'city', Natora Head, reminder of what might have been. If the environment dome had ever been completed. If the terraforming project, designed to unlock the water frozen in the planet's polar icecaps, hadn't been long abandoned. If there really had been rich ore deposits on the planet when Mercator Corporation were tricked into purchasing the world from the Bothans at great expense. If Mercator Corporation hadn't subsequently been forced into bankruptcy, leaving the entire world trapped in a forgotten limbo where nobody wanted to claim responsibility for it . . .

A whole lot of ifs, but just possibly, this might now be a thriving spaceport rather than a rat hole populated near-exclusively by smugglers, the less salubrious type of bounty hunter, and those unfortunate individuals too poor to emigrate at the first available opportunity.

"Any sign, Tee?"

A curt beep in his ear signalled the negative. The utility droid hadn't been able to get any kind of fix on Hulas.

Tamar scanned the hulking plastocrete structure directly across the street in front of him. It was badly scarred and crumbling from years of exposure to similar storms to the current one: Natora Head's main marketplace, and the centrepiece of this Force-forsaken town.

The message Hulas had sent him was brief and to the point. _I have information on the person who is framing you. Information that I think you will find extraordinarily valuable_. No more than that.

The hologram had then gone on to provide details of this meeting, where allegedly the information would be passed on. It was suspiciously close to their intended destination, and on a time scale that left no scope to do anything other than walk right on in. _Come alone, as when we first met in __Ahto__City__. I include the absence of assassin droids in my definition of alone._

_But not utility droids_. That was how Tamar had chosen to take Hulas's recorded words anyway. Without that proviso he'd have probably interpreted 'alone' more literally.

_Honest until you start thinking too hard about it_, was how Yuthura had described it when he'd commented.

A thought that should have had previously occurred to him breached the surface. Nothing in the message had said authoritatively that Hulas would be showing up in person. "Tee, can you get me a list of everyone who's landed on Nawathwai in the past week?"

"Beep-woo-bop."

The length of the list took Tamar by surprise, given what a backwater this world initially seemed. Smugglers needed to keep busy too, he supposed. He concentrated on the last couple of days' activity, but of course, none of the names or ships meant anything to him. Most were likely falsified anyway.

Abruptly he let out a breath. The mask made it sound alarmingly hollow and rasping. "Okay, Tee. I'm going in."

T3 made a cautious whistling noise.

"Hey, when have I ever been anything except scrupulously careful?"

The silence was its own answer.

Passing through a worryingly decrepit and wheezy airlock, sensors in the breath mask told Tamar that the air quality was now just about good enough to sustain human life. He kept it on anyway, noting that at least two-thirds of the people he was passing did likewise – his face wasn't exactly unknown in the galaxy right now, and the less people who saw it, the better. The sudden loss of the all-pervasive wind noise was briefly disorientating, making him wonder if he'd gone partially deaf.

Walking across a half-empty market place, he was aware of natives watching him with a mixture of curiosity and thinly veiled hostility. A glimpse of the modified heavy-blaster pistol worn openly at his hip, and the occasional metal flashes of armour showing through his nondescript outer robes, tended to have those looks turning away very quickly again. His lightsaber was well hidden, so hopefully he was being taken for nothing more than another well-armed bounty hunter – someone you didn't want to hassle or get too curious about.

He located the cantina where the meeting was due to take place. It was about fifty metres along the wall running along the east side of the market. A cursory glance showed that the sign outside was missing at least three letters.

Up to that point, Tamar had been holding his Force-presence very tightly contained, trying to remain as near to invisible as was possible on the off chance there was another Force-adept somewhere in Natora Head. On the slightly more than off chance that this was all some kind of double-cross.

Now he risked opening up just slightly, sending out tentative feelers and trying to get a sense of whether there was trouble waiting for him.

Immediately he brushed against _something_. It was a fleeting contact, and whatever it was drew back quickly – too quickly for him to sense any more from it than a lingering impression of surprise. Whoever – whatever – it was had definitely felt him.

Tamar's heart thudded. It took a considerable effort not immediately go for his blaster, and he knew that no one watching him could have failed to spot the break in his stride. Grimacing behind the breath mask, he forced himself to keep on walking, trying to scan the marketplace surreptitiously for watchers.

There, on a terrace overlooking the square.

He caught a fleeting glimpse of movement – formed a brief impression of a hooded individual wearing a breath mask similar to his own. They ducked back as soon as his gaze passed over them.

Force guided instinct had him throw himself flat. An instant later, a sniper shot cracked out, passing above his diving form by the merest fraction and punching a hole through the plastocrete wall directly behind him.

The reaction of the other people in the marketplace was telling. There were no screams, and no running around in heedless panic, but in very short order everyone seemed to have disappeared into thin air, leaving him worryingly isolated and exposed.

_Just another typical day in Natora Head. Just another shoot out_.

It wasn't, he reflected grimly as he scrambled forward on his belly across the grit-covered plastocrete, the fact that it was a trap that surprised him. Just that it was such a blatantly unsubtle one.

- - -

"Looks like someone started on the fun without us." Canderous finally broke the heavy silence.

Bastila turned to look at him. Part of her wanted to scream. Part of her wondered why she didn't.

It was nothing to do with the carnage spread out in front of them. That was all too familiar – scattered metal fragments and the charred hulks of Star Forge droids; blaster burns and broader, sootier smears across floor and walls that indicated the use of a flamethrower. An elite Sith trooper, red armour rent and buckled, sat propped lifelessly against one wall, his presence telling. It wasn't even the freshness of it all, a day or two old at the outside. The physical traces of battle, no matter how terrible, were something they'd all become wearily inured to.

Instead it was the hideous sense that she was trapped inside a half-remembered nightmare – one where she was attempting to sneak past a dozing giant, knowing that the slightest sound or misstep would result in it awakening and all of its fury crashing down on top of her. The lingering impression of everything around her being somehow alive – of being, effectively, trapped in the guts of an indescribably huge living beast – only added to the feeling, until it became all but unbearable.

"If this is somehow your idea of fun." She had to struggle against the instinct to talk in sub-audible whispers, resisting a paranoid certainty that the walls were listening to their every word.

He shrugged. "You take it where you find it, and try not to ask too many uncomfortable questions while you're at it."

She started to open her mouth, but hesitated, the retort dying away unspoken. Instead, she watched him as he prowled the perimeter of the chamber, peering all around him as if looking for something specific. He paused briefly in front of what looked like some kind of control panel. It had been damaged by stray blaster fire, but flickering Rakatan symbols still showed through. "Interesting," he grunted.

"What is?" She hadn't been aware that he could read Rakatan.

"Not that." He made a sweeping gesture with one arm. "Everything around us. I mean, from the outside this might as well be the _Leviathan's_ sistership, but inside . . ." A headshake. "Well, you can see yourself. Could hardly be more different, could it?"

Everything curved, the walls and ceiling supported by almost organic looking ribbing. It reinforced the sense that their surroundings were alive, the corridors and chambers they walked through the equivalent of internal organs. Even the lighting was slightly odd – a sickly kind of hue that ran against human aesthetics.

"And your point?" A taut edge had crept into her voice.

"Didn't say I had a point, now, did I? I just said it was interesting."

"Great," she muttered. "Just when I start thinking the situation can't get any worse and you start channelling Jolee."

The look he shot her way suggested he didn't find the comparison altogether flattering.

Bastila gritted her teeth – struggling against nameless tension crushing in on her from all sides. The walls seemed to shift in the corners of her vision, making her eyes dart this way and that, though there was never anything to see when she tried to look at it directly.

She exhaled deeply, striving for an approximation of calm. "The Star Forge bases what it produces around the characteristics of those who control it. Maybe it was always like that, or maybe it was something it . . . evolved."

"So this is a real Rakatan ship? An old one. Not something Revan or Malak built."

"It looks that way," she answered shortly. He was leaning close to the control panel again. "Don't touch that!"

He glanced back at her, mouth twisting. "How stupid do you think I am, exactly, Princess?"

As he was speaking, his head continued to move forward fractionally – a centimetre or two at most. It passed through some kind of proximity trigger, and a red light came on at about his eye level. This produced a fan of fine red beams, which swept smoothly up and down the length of his body in the space of about half a second.

_Not good_.

The hush was expectant – waiting for disaster.

There was a sharp clicking noise that made everyone there, Canderous included, jolt. A pair of ceiling panels directly above them retracted.

"Exactly that stupid?" Bastila grasped her badly battered and patched up lightsaber hilt as everyone around her instantly readied their own weapons, scrambling frantically.

"Exactly that stupid," Canderous agreed. The edge of his vibrosword hummed and blurred.

On cue, a pair of battle droids dropped down from above, landing right in the midst of them with a hollow metallic clank.

There was a frozen pause.

Bastila's twin lightsaber blades ignited a fraction before the air filled with blaster-fire. The droids' shields flickered lambently, repelling shot after shot from Republic issue blaster rifles.

As her yellow blades darted to deflect return fire, Bastila was aware of Canderous charging in at one of the droids' exposed flanks. His vibroblade penetrated smoothly through its shields and pierced its metal casing with equal ease. He then proceeded to leverage it open – as if he was attacking a mess tin with a can opener and rather more enthusiasm than its contents probably merited.

The second droid darted forward at her, as if drawn, moth-like, to the glare of her lightsaber.

A rapid flurry of blows cracked off its shields without getting through. One of its vicious looking metal pincers snapped at her, coming within millimetres of finding her flesh and forcing her onto the back foot. Instinct and trained reaction taking over, she shoved it back from her via the Force, toppling it onto its side.

While it was still struggling to right itself, an ion grenade rolled underneath its armoured body. The detonation took out its shields and left it reeling drunkenly. A second or so later a concentrated volley of blaster shots had reduced it to smouldering scrap metal.

Staring at the wreckage, the dread that Bastila felt was entirely out of proportion to what just had happened. She was dimly aware of Canderous staring at her, a questioning look on his face – something lurking beneath the surface that might have been concern.

It barely registered. Something else had her attention held fast.

She'd felt the sleeping giant awaken.

It peered at her with unblinking eyes from beneath the spikes of a vast and heavy crown.

- - -

'Admiral' Bortha examined the bridge controls with a mixture of resignation and distaste, and inwardly struggled with how to phrase the fact to Darth Malefic that none of it was usable.

All the symbols in front of him were Rakatan, and it wasn't simply a matter of direct translation. You couldn't make even educated guesses, because the way the controls were arranged was completely different to anything he was familiar with, designed to suit the logic and ergonomics of an alien way of thinking.

On top of that, the layout of the bridge itself didn't feel right. Even allowing for the fact that the Rakatans would have different method of sharing out duties, there seemed to be too few stations, and the position and spacing just felt . . . unnatural.

Bortha couldn't escape the feeling that his highly strained staff officers would be about as useful here as raw recruits. He also couldn't escape the feeling that Malefic wasn't going to like being told that fact one bit.

It all felt like a bad cosmic joke at his expense. Admiral, indeed.

He bit down on a frustrated sigh, not wanting to draw any more attention to himself yet. Certainly not wanting to draw Malefic's attention. He walked forward, to the next control station in sequence, uncomfortably aware of the loudness of his footsteps on the metal deck – even more uncomfortably aware of the several sets of eyes watching him.

Again, throat uncomfortably tight, he made a show of inspecting what was in front of him. The pristineness was something else that he found oddly disconcerting. Everything looked as if it had rolled off the production line that morning instead of being tens of thousands of years old . . .. He stopped abruptly, losing track of his thoughts, and looked up.

Something had . . . changed.

The feel of the air reminded him uncomfortably of that awful chamber far down below, bringing back involuntary thoughts of Kassar and screaming that wouldn't stop. He could feel his skin prickling, the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

"M-Master?" It took Bortha a moment to recognise Levix's voice. It was stripped entirely of the all too familiar peremptory Dark Jedi arrogance, and sounded frighteningly young.

Darth Malefic was standing completely motionless, a gleaming red statue. His head was bowed forward fractionally, as though the weight of his crown was too much for his neck muscles to properly support.

It was that crown that held Bortha's gaze, rapt. It was glowing. Shining brighter and brighter until it became painful to look at, and he was forced to flinch away.

Bortha had seen it glow like this before; each time they had gone to battle at Hoth and Tylace, and then again at Daragba. A sideways glance showed Illarie's face, taut and slick beneath a patina of perspiration. She obviously sensed something that he could not. Judging by the look in her eyes, that was something he should be profoundly grateful for.

Abruptly, Darth Malefic moved again, and the spell seemed to shatter, the immediate edge of tension fading from the air.

No one said a word. Bortha could hear multiple sets of lungs, all of them breathing far too quickly.

"Shan," Malefic said at length. Bortha was embarrassed to feel himself jolt as the silence was broken.

"Bastila Shan." The Sith Lord's voice was soft, caressing the name in a manner that was profoundly disturbing. "She is here, aboard this ship."

Gauntleted fingers snapped, pistol shot loud, and he gestured sharply to Levix and Geryoth in turn. "With me."

The Dark Jedi bowed their heads in unison. "We will make her yours, my Lord." Levix's voice was back to hard and arrogant. "When she kneels before you, and surrenders her Battle Meditation into your great hands, nothing in this galaxy will be able to stand before you."

Malefic's gaze snapped round on Levix in a manner that made Bortha wince. He heard a snort from beneath that sleekly angular red helmet.

"I do not _care_ about her Battle Meditation, halfwit. It is nothing to the powers that I already possess, and I will not risk falling to the same obsession as my two predecessors. We go to kill her, and all those with her. Is that understood?"

The bows were considerably deeper and more flustered this time. Bortha noted that Malefic barely bothered glancing at them. The Sith troopers smoothly fell into formation alongside him as he strode imperiously towards the main turbolift.

"No, not you, Illarie," he snapped as Bortha's notional bodyguard started to follow in her Lord's wake. "You and the Admiral will remain here."

Bortha wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or not. The sidelong look he got from Illarie was murderous.

- - -

Morrigance sensed clearly as Darth Malefic began to draw on the power of the Crown of Drochmar. No Force-adept within a span of several light years could have failed to feel that awful storm swirling into life, whether or not its hammering fury was directed at them personally.

At this proximity – a few scant tens of kilometres, give or take – it rapidly became almost overwhelming.

_For all the awful weight of it, it is addictive is it not, old _friend_? It fills your thoughts, more and more. It fills your dreams._

A moment later, she felt a second, much smaller flicker of Force. Compared with the first it was feeble – a guttering candle flame in the face of a hurricane – but it proved to be remarkably persistent and resilient.

_Bastila Shan_. One egg she'd hoped wouldn't become part of the coming omelette. A pity.

She shook her head slightly – pushed the thought away. Now was not the time for distractions.

After passing through the wormhole leading into this hidden void, Morrigance had de-cloaked her converted fighter, confident that no one on board the shuttle ahead of her would be looking at anything behind them. Instead of following that shuttle towards the living fleet's flagship, she'd piloted slowly and serenely towards another of the Rakatan ships hanging in the darkness alongside it.

It suited her purposes better to work uninterrupted.

Upon setting down, she'd broadcast an ancient Rakatan code sequence to identify herself. If nothing else, it had at least piqued the vessel's curiosity enough to prevent its automated security systems from instantly terminating her the moment she stepped out of her ship.

Her footsteps were soft and muffled as she walked across the landing bay. The combination of silence, stillness, and utter darkness, mixed with the sensation of being watched from all sides, was distinctly eerie. Even if it was something she'd experienced before.

She stopped in front of an activation panel beside the landing bay's main bulkhead door. A thin flashlight beam picked out vertical columns of precisely etched Rakatan symbols. Although she had never possessed Revan's seemingly supernatural knack for picking up languages, she'd learned the main Rakatan languages and sub-dialects well enough over the years.

Stripping off a tight black glove, she laid the palm of her hand against a smooth, flat panel.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, abruptly, a glowing figure stepped out of the wall in front of her. A Rakatan, and a hologram, though considering the surroundings, her initial thought – a pale cyan ghost – seemed much more appropriate.

It barked at her in its own language: "State your business, slave of the Builders."

She took a moment to get her phrasing in order. "I am in service to – " she recited an identity code that she'd gleaned from documents Revan had obtained from the Star Forge. "I require access and safe passage."

"For what purpose, slave of the Builders?"

That left her slightly taken aback. That answer had been perfectly adequate to gain her unimpeded admission the last time she was here. Perhaps, she thought, the fleet was more awake and alert now thanks to Malefic's efforts. "Classified. Compliance is required. All queries to be taken up with – " she repeated the code.

The hologram vanished, leaving her in near-darkness once more.

The delay before anything happened was just long enough to provoke the beginnings of disquiet, before – finally – the door slid open with a whisper-soft hiss and the lights came on in front of her.

She stepped forward, across the threshold.

_"You mean to say that this has all been a waste of time?"_

_The voice, harsh and strident, belonged to Darth Malak. She stood off to one side, away from the dread apprentice and his dark master, silently observing from the shadows. Light gleamed off the top of his clean-shaven skull, the twin stripes of his red tattoos standing out starkly._

_The enclosed space of the _Flying Kuat's _high-security vault_ _only went to emphasise Malak's immense physical stature. The top of his head almost scraped the ceiling, the muscles of his huge shoulders and back seemingly straining to burst free of his dark red armour, compressing the space around him. Everything about him spoke of barely contained, bestial rage, and she could feel great swells of the Force swirling around him – a surging black vortex. The sheer _power_ that she sensed within him was . . . frightening._

_"If you choose to look at it that way." Revan's answer, in comparison, was unreal in its calm. His mask glinted where the light caught its polished surface. By no means a small man, he was nevertheless physically dwarfed in present company. From him, she got almost no Force sense at all._

_"What other way of looking at it is there?" Seething rage bubbled just below the surface – a poisoned well._

_The air tasted stale to Morrigance as she breathed in, the Flying Kuat's atmospheric scrubbers no longer working at anything close to full efficiency after decades floating dead in space._

_"Sometimes it is almost as valuable to know where something is not, as opposed to where it is." The voice was light – halfway amused. A black gloved hand made a casual, flicking gesture. "Besides, there have been . . . compensations. It has by no means been a total loss."_

_"Jedi texts and Holocrons?" Malak's contempt dripped._

_"Knowledge is power. How often have do I tell you that, Mal?" To Morrigance's ears, the diminutive rang like some ghastly mistimed joke. "Surely you've grown tired of hearing it by now?"_

_"You never expected to find it here at all, did you? This was all one of your . . . sleight of hands." Morrigance could sense Malak's deep frustration clearly. She knew that Revan must sense it too._

_"I hoped rather than expected," he said after a lengthy pause. "Alas, it now appears most likely that it was destroyed on Ossus after all. We both knew all along that was a very definite possibility, did we not . . . my apprentice?"_

_The tone remained light, but the words _my apprentice_ lingered on the air. A very, very pointed reminder, for all that Revan's outward manner was absolutely casual._

_It seemed that Malak was perceptive enough to take the reminder for what it was. He inclined his head, albeit grudgingly. Morrigance felt some of the dark power gathered around him subside as his anger reined in. "My master."_

_Revan acknowledged gracefully, and changed the subject as if it had never truly mattered. "Tell me, Mal." Back so easily to that casual diminutive, which seemed so glaringly out of place. Like calling a terantatek Tiddles. "How go matters with Admiral Karath?"_

_Silence. _

_She sensed rumbling resentment – a volcano in the early stages prior to an eruption, days or possibly months or even years from now. It was more tightly contained than the prior rage, but also, she thought, considerably more dangerous. "Have I not earned more than to be subject constantly to these tests of loyalty and obedience?"_

_Morrigance caught herself sucking in her breath. The Force was gathering around Revan now too, and suddenly she had no wish at all to be quite so close to the pair of them. _Dark and unstable stars you orbit, girl

_"Indeed. You are far too valuable to me to waste on tests and petty power games."_

_"Then why use me for this? You have always been the one with the people skills – the charm and the charisma. You're the one who can persuade a person to gladly lay down their life for you after five minutes in your company. Not me."_

_"Saul has never quite forgiven me for Pallastre," Revan said softly after a disconcertingly lengthy pause. "Oh, intellectually he saw the necessity, and if the decision had been left down to him alone, he would have made exactly the same strategic choice that I did. But emotionally . . .. Emotionally is a different matter. Hard to see your homeworld sacrificed, for whatever reason." A small headshake. "No, I think he would subconsciously find excuses to turn down a direct approach from me."_

_Malak grunted noncommittally._

_"You on the other hand, Mal. You are untainted by such bitter associations. You he genuinely liked and admired. A true warrior."_

_Finally, Malak gave another small nod._

_"Now, _tell_ me how matters progress." Revan's voice changed abruptly, making her jolt. It suddenly sounded hollow and alien behind his mask – frighteningly cold. "I do not appreciate having to explain each and every simple request I make. And I believe I enjoy being tested even less than you."_

_Malak inclined his head much more deeply this time. Morrigance had the impression of a wolf baring its throat, however grudgingly, to the alpha male, acknowledging its supremacy. _

For now

_"My apologies, my master. I ask your forgiveness."_

_Revan made a dismissive gesture. "Granted, old friend."_

_But it was not as simple as that. Other currents ran hidden beneath the surface, which she could only faintly glimpse. Years and years of accumulated personal history._

_She heard Malak take a deep breath. "Contact with Admiral Karath has been initiated through our agents. He has not, as yet, reported the matter to Republic intelligence, and he appears to have been persuaded to postpone his resignation from fleet command. For the time being, at least. The agents haven't revealed who they represent, though I scarcely think it is beyond him to work it out for himself."_

_Revan simply nodded. "Good. Keep me informed."_

_"You truly think he will join our cause? He has served the Republic loyally for forty years."_

_"And was about to retire, even as war threatens to overwhelm them. His wife has left him. Petty political squabbles stall the reconstruction work on Pallastre. His career is stuck in a twilit graveyard. No, the Republic, in its current form, is dead to him. His pride has been kicked too many times, and he is looking for something else, whether he knows it yet or not."_

_Malak simply grunted again – neither agreement nor disagreement. Revan started to turn away._

Do you not have enough Admirals to do your bidding? _she had asked him earlier, on the same subject._

_His answer had been a laugh. _More admirals than I can shake a stick at. In the same way that before you, I had a surfeit of spymasters, none of them worth the name.

He is important?

I cannot be everywhere at once, _he'd said at length_. And the Sith doctrines are almost as bad, tactically, as the Republic's reactive passivity. _Another laugh, darker this time and tinged with bitterness_. Sometimes I think I should have made myself Mandalore rather than Dark Lord of the Sith. At least then, I would have followers who know how to properly conduct a war.

Morrigance stepped past a pair of sentry droids – motionless but humming softly, indicating they were entirely active, for all that they made no move to challenge her. The lift car opened in front of her, responding to her approach, and she stepped inside.

She could still feel the storm of Force centred on Darth Malefic as strongly as ever. Almost surprisingly, she could still sense Bastila too, standing firm. It did occur to her to wonder if she might somehow even win. That would certainly be an . . . interesting turn of events. And quite the spanner thrown into the spokes of her plan.

As her fingers moved rapidly to program in the lift car's destination, her mind was already working on contingencies. Several satisfactory ones came to mind almost immediately, though they would likely prove redundant. Across the void, she felt the ripples of people dying, and Bastila's candle flame flickered more wildly than ever, nearly blown out.

She activated the lift car, which accelerated smoothly on the horizontal, taking her rapidly towards the heart of the ship.

_"And what of all this?" Malak gestured sharply at the piles of high- security transport crates that filled the vault, all of them with their combination locks now opened. "We simply abandon it?"_

_Revan looked back, shrugging as if disinterested. "If you see anything you like, then by all means, take it, old friend. I already have all that I need." With that, he strode out of the hold._

_Morrigance could feel the turmoil flowing through Malak as he simply stood there. He seemed, for the moment, to have forgotten her presence, and she wasn't immediately sure that she wanted to do anything to draw his attention to it, even by the act of leaving. _

_So she remained a shade, lurking in the background._

_Abruptly, he stepped forward, selecting a crate – seemingly at random, but not; the Force guiding his hands – and opening it._

_She heard his breath catch. He reached inside._

_The object he pulled out was clearly meant to be a crown. It was a ring of plain and heavy bronze-hued metal, eight inches deep and open at the front. On either side of that front opening was a long spike made of some kind of translucent crystal._

_He stared at it in fascination, turning it round in hands that were surprisingly deft for so huge a man._

_As she watched, something tightened inside her chest. Part of her wanted nothing more than to turn around and get out of there. Leave him to whatever consequences he brought down upon himself. _

_Except, she didn't think that Revan would be altogether accepting of that particular action._

_She cleared her throat. "Lord Malak, I would advise caution with that."_

_He turned to face her with measured slowness. "Fel. You are good at lurking in the shadows, aren't you?"_

_"Well, it is my job."_

_Malak continued as if she'd never spoken. "And I do not recollect asking for your advice." He took a step forward, looming over her. One thing he was definitely beyond compare at was using his sheer, monstrous presence to dominate and intimidate. "Something you had your eye on yourself I take it? Something you don't want me to have?"_

_It was a struggle to keep on standing her ground. He crackled with barely contained fury, his eyes as dense as neutron stars, boring into her._

_This was not, she reflected, a good position to be in. There was nowhere to retreat. He could block her from going round him, and if he wanted to force a confrontation, there was no way she could avoid it. And she was very, very aware that at this proximity, in this set of circumstances, if that came to pass, he would kill her easily._

_"Not at all, Lord Malak." She made sure to keep her voice calm and scrupulously polite, neither challenging nor too deferential, which would merely be an invitation for him to press all the harder. "I merely sought to warn you that the artefact you hold is the Crown of Drochmar."_

_His expression told her that this meant precisely nothing to him. Which in turn meant that the intelligence report she had taken such pains to compile had gone unread._

_"Do not think, just because you share his bed on occasion, that Revan cares for you." She felt something touch her throat – a lingering, deeply unsettling phantom caress that had her struggling to suppress a shudder. His eyes seemed to shine, and she fought down her instinctive urge to shove the touch away. "If I were to throttle the life out of you right now . . ." The caress became like an invisible noose around her neck, not gripping hard enough to choke, but suggesting in completely unambiguous terms that it could, if he willed it so. ". . . he would not so much as bat an eyelid. He would certainly not protect you."_

_Morrigance met his gaze levelly, projecting an outer calm that did not remotely extend beneath the surface. "I would expect not," she agreed._

_The grip on her throat eased up, then finally vanished. "And do not suppose your influence is greater than it truly is. You are a useful tool, among other useful tools. No more. No less."_

_"Have I done something to offend you, Lord Malak?" she asked mildly. "If so then you have my apologies. I certainly have no wish to expand my sphere of influence, or tread upon the toes of others."_

_He smiled thinly. Malak hardly ever smiled, and it was a profoundly disturbing expression. "Tell me, Fel, are you a liar, or simply deeply stupid?"_

_A question she was best off not trying to answer. She looked back at him coldly._

_"Now, I happen to know that Revan is remarkably intolerant of stupidity, no matter how aesthetically pleasing the package it comes wrapped in. So I'm guessing it must be the former."_

_"Aren't all Sith liars, my Lord?" she asked, one eyebrow tilted up. "But, to be absolutely clear: I do not delude myself into thinking I could remotely challenge you, nor do my ambitions stretch in that direction."_

_Those ultra-dense eyes continued to scour her, unrelenting. Eventually he gave a nod so small it was barely perceptible. It was difficult not to let the relief that welled up inside her show through. _

_Malak lifted the crown up to his eye level. "So explain to me, what disaster, exactly, will I unleash if I put this on?" Suddenly, he sounded darkly amused._

_She took a deep breath. She could feel the latent power the crown – a dark nimbus surrounding the strange, bronzed metal. "If the information Jedi Master Vrook possessed is correct, it is nearly three thousand years old. It was created by a pureblood Sith from the Ch'Hodos system, Sharad Drochmar."_

_"Fascinating," Malak stated dryly._

_"Indeed." Morrigance matched his tone precisely. "Drochmar was a master artificer. A man of great skill and highly specialised Force ability, but – much to his profound bitterness – little wider influence or respect. As his bitterness festered over long years, he sought to use his particular skills to change his situation. He became determined to create an artefact purely for himself: an artefact that would amplify the power of his will a thousand times over; a crown that would proclaim him undeniably as the greatest Sith Lord ever to have lived, and against which no one on Ch'Hodos – or any other of the Sith worlds – could hope to stand. Those who had mocked or ignored him would bow down to him as Dread Emperor, or be utterly destroyed." She shrugged. "If you are going to be delusional, you might as well be grandiose about it, I suppose."_

_"I take it his efforts were unsuccessful, since he has notably failed to go down in history."_

_Morrigance shrugged a second time. "His success was . . . qualified. The perfection of his crown became an abiding obsession, to the point that he invested over twenty years in its creation, pouring all of his strength into it – along with the life blood of a succession of apprentices – and making it powerful beyond compare."_

_"And it _is_ powerful. We both feel that much, do we not?" There was an avid gleam in Malak's eye. "It would be a tragic shame if such a spectacular piece of craftsmanship did not finally find a worthy owner." He lifted it above his head, as though to don it._

_"Unfortunately, Drochmar made an error of judgement with its construction." Morrigance wondered if it was just her imagination, but at that moment, the crown's twin crystal spikes seemed to glitter with motes of inner light. She struggled to suppress a shiver._

_"Oh?" Malak stopped. The crown was poised millimetres above his shaven scalp._

_"As he reached the critical juncture in the creative process, Drochmar grew weak and sickly. There is apparently only so much raw dark Force energy you can channel through your flesh before it starts to have a profoundly negative effect. He became reliant on his final apprentice – a halfblooded female, whose name has not survived the years – to help bring his work to culmination."_

_"Let me guess." The voice was dryer than Tattooine's deserts now. "The apprentice betrayed the master."_

_Morrigance inclined her head. "The apprentice made a subtle, but telling alteration to Drochmar's work, subverting its purpose."_

_"Ah?" Malak lowered the crown so he was holding it in front of his chest again. "Do tell."_

_"When Drochmar donned the finished product of his work, it was all he could have hoped for and more. His first act was to use the crown to burn the minds of everyone in Ch'Hodos's capital city, Ch'Doran – more than a million people, reduced to little more than packs of ravening ghouls in the space of a few hours as he reached out to them with all his pent-up fury. His second act was to hunt down all his rivals on that world – all those who had done him ill, real or imagined – and annihilate them. No one was able to stand against him."_

_"And his third act?"_

_"Was to bow down before his apprentice, an utterly obedient slave." She left the words hanging._

_"Explain," Malak pressed sharply._

_Morrigance smiled tightly. "The apprentice had been very clever. Each time Drochmar used his crown, it changed him subtly, altering the neural pathways of his brain, effectively binding his will to hers, until he could no more resist her than he could refrain from breathing – slave, automaton and pet."_

_Silence lingered._

_"So you see, what you hold is an interesting paradox. One of the most awesomely powerful Sith artefacts ever created, yet practically, it is close to useless, eventually turning anyone who tries to wield its vast strength into an utterly compliant slave."_

_"What happened to the apprentice?" Malak asked after several seconds lingering pause, his voice as near to soft as it ever got._

_"As I understand it, the Ch'Hodos military decided to carpet bomb the continent on which Drochmar dwelled from orbit. The crown survived the destruction. Not a lot else did."_

_Abruptly Malak started laughing, as if he suddenly found something uproariously funny. If his smiles were rare, his laughter was unheard of, and it left Morrigance deeply unsettled. The laughter faded quickly, but the unsettled feeling lingered on. "Absolutely factually accurate, almost word for word. Quite frankly I'm astonished."_

He'd known all along. _He'd been fully aware of her presence the whole time, and had been toying with her for his amusement. She watched him closely, tension filling her, unsure how things would play from here_.

_All he did was casually toss the crown in the general direction of the packing crate he'd lifted it from._

_It hit the rim and bounced off, landing on its side with a weighty metallic _thunk_. Her gaze was glued to it as it span round a couple of time, before finally toppling over and coming to rest._

_When she looked up again, Malak had gone. She let out a long, shuddering breath._

_She'd underestimated him. A _lot_ of people had underestimated him. Anyone who simply dismissed him as the brawn to Revan's intellect – a mindless weapon – was likely to be in for an extremely unpleasant surprise somewhere down the line._

_She bent down and, very carefully, picked up the discarded crown. The weight of it was surprising – it would be excruciatingly uncomfortable to wear it for any length of time – and the metal felt deeply unpleasant to touch; completely dry, but still somehow oily. She put it back inside its crate and closed it._

After all, Revan _is_ remarkably intolerant of stupidity

The lift car came smoothly to a halt, the doors sliding open silently.

Morrigance stepped out, footsteps rhythmic on the metal floor, seemingly amplified by the vast cathedral-like space around her. She continued forwards until she reached the back wall of the huge, gloomy chamber, able to feel the Force shifting around her in strange, slow flows. There, amid a mass of gleaming tubes and filaments, was a metal cage in the shape of a humanoid figure.

She stopped directly in front of it.

- - -

A Republic commando made a strangled, incoherent sound. A moment later, he opened fire, blazing away madly at something lurking in the shadows, which only his eyes could see.

Another joined in a moment later, completely spooked, discipline disintegrating.

A third dropped to his knees, clutching at his head. He ripped his helmet off, before tugging at his hair, seemingly trying to tear it out by the handful, clawing at his scalp.

The pressure inside Bastila's skull grew to such a level of intensity that an agonised groan was dragged from between tightly clenched teeth. For all that she'd sought to prepare for it in advance, the sheer strength and violence of Malefic's mental assault almost overwhelmed her entirely in those first few seconds. It was all she could do, initially, to keep her own consciousness intact against the onslaught, let alone try to help protect the others from its raging intensity.

There was a high-pitched cry that cut off abruptly. One of the spooked commandos toppled over sideways, hitting the deck with a crash as one of his comrades shot him in the back.

"_Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"_

The commando who'd fallen to his knees began banging his forehead repeatedly against the floor. The skin of his forehead split open, blood splattering messily with each drumming impact. Still he kept on banging.

The effort of focussing made her scream rawly, though she barely heard it. The dark, crowned and wraith-like form she glimpsed in her mind's eye tore into them with relentless fury. It had every bit as much power as when she'd faced it before at Tylace, but now it seemed to have developed greater skill and subtlety to go with it, cutting with viciously precise assaults rather than flailing clumsily like an idiot giant.

_The benefits of practise._

Desperately, shaking uncontrollably, she struggled to resist – to fight back. She drew on all of the discipline learned from countless hours of painstaking practise and the real thing, using a form of her Battle Meditation to reach out and shield those around her; to reinforce their strength and provide a centre they could anchor to. The effort came close to tearing her apart.

Too late for one.

She 'saw' it as a black hand, reaching inside the man's skull with a dreadful casualness and ripping something free. He collapsed instantly, dire ripples spreading through the Force and threatening to sweep her away along with them. The conscious part of him was lost forever in the dark, consuming maelstrom. For a moment, her Battle Meditation came very close to collapsing in on itself, spreading fear and pain and panic rather than abating them.

A strong, armour-plated arm grabbed her round the shoulders, and – almost brutally – yanked her back to her feet. She hadn't noticed until that point that she'd fallen over. It held her upright as her legs threatened immediately to buckle again. _Canderous_.

She stood firm. Barely.

The man who'd had his consciousness ripped away growled; a dreadfully familiar sound – that of the Mind Burnt. He launched himself at the person nearest to him, bowling them over and tearing into them with bare hands and teeth.

A fraction of a second later a volley of blaster shots slammed into him. Bastila felt his death like a knife-thrust to the gut.

Briefly, the intensity of Malefic's assault redoubled, dragging another incoherent scream from her throat. She staggered, though Canderous was there again quickly, supporting her. She tried to fight back as best she could, making her will hard and slippery so that the Dark Lord's continued thrusts slid repeatedly off her without penetrating beyond the surface.

Growing terror threatened to overwhelm her. His clutching, sticky, tar-like grasp closed in from every side, cutting off her escape routes one by one, absorbing her counterthrusts as if they weren't there . . .

Then, so abruptly that it left her gasping, it died back down – a background susurration of dark waves rather than the crashing tsunami of just an instant before. She gulped for breath, struggling to control her shaking.

For several long seconds she was too light-headed and disoriented to work out what had happened – wondered briefly if she could possibly, crazily, have somehow won without knowing it. Finally, realisation hit her.

"He's coming." She muttered beneath her breath, and saw that Canderous at least heard her. "He's coming for us in person."

- - -

The blade-angled round sharply, whipping through the space her knees would normally have occupied.

Yuthura had anticipated, and rather than try to block, she leapt over the blow, leaving her opponent temporarily overextended. A booted foot connected solidly with his forehead as he attempted to sway back, out of range.

The impact was almost as detrimental to her as it was to him. He shrugged off the after effects almost instantly, though a line of blood now ran from a rapidly forming swelling above his eye. In a boxing contest, it might seriously hamper him given time, but this form of combat was usually over far more quickly than that. She, meanwhile, struggled to disguise the pain from her now badly bruised foot. Much harder and she'd have broken it.

They went back to circling, the brief flurry of blindingly fast and violent activity subsiding into watchfulness and strategic manoeuvring for position. It was a strange, informal dance of rapid freeform footwork and shifting body angles as the two combatants sought to gain an opening to launch their next attacks, identical sword blades shifting constantly in angle and position, but nothing much actually _happening_.

Those blades were matching ceremonial Echani constructs, lightweight and elegant. Although lacking the deadliness of vibroblades and lightsabers – where even the heaviest armour tended to be nothing better than a psychological comfort – they were a long way from practice weapons, perfectly capable of maiming or killing in skilled hands.

Another brief flurry, too quick for the naked eye to properly pick out individual sword strokes, broke the growing inertia. Yuthura scored a glancing hit that tore through the top level of her opponent's lightweight padded armour, ripping stuffing free but failing to penetrate the flexible carbon-fibre plate inside.

Inevitably, her opponent scored a reciprocal hit, the impact no more able to penetrate than hers, but leaving her with a muscle-deep bruise on her right side, just below her ribcage.

Then they were back to the holding pattern, jockeying once more for position.

The comfort that, in a lightsaber duel, she'd have just won, was rather empty. If this had been done with lightsabers she'd have won four times over already. On each of those four occasions, however, he had managed to hit home shortly after she had – and his hits carried a small, but in the long-term, potentially significant, degree of extra muscle-power behind them.

Although not exactly losing yet, neither was she winning.

His name was Gare N'Valto, and he was the leader of the Echani mercenaries formerly employed by Seboba. Up until a few days ago, he'd been no more than third in command of their group, but a rapid promotion had ensued when HK-47 had so enthusiastically helped take control of the _Rancorous's_ bridge.

Her immediate reaction to his challenge was to laugh in his face. Something, however, had held her back, for all the fact that her view of fighting for honour was below contempt – the preserve of self-deluding idiots, who needed to fool themselves that it somehow transformed morally reprehensible acts into something that was not only respectable, but esteemable.

Instead, after several seconds of careful consideration, she'd accepted.

The look in Gare's eyes had told her she'd been meant to refuse. That the challenge had been no more than a matter of form, designed to assuage the needs of honour and legitimise his command when she turned him down flat out. _I've fulfilled all my obligations. You can't blame me if aliens have no sense of the proper way of doing things_, he could say.

Too late to take back his words by that time, of course. Much to his chagrin. Especially since he'd made sure the challenge was given in front of witnesses.

That was how they came to be here now, inside one of the Rancorous's empty cargo holds, with only their respective seconds as an audience. She'd prevailed upon Zaalbar to take that role for her, knowing that none of the Jedi would approve at all of what she was doing. There had been no objections on the Wookiee's part – in fact, he seemed honoured to be asked, more impressed by her fluency in Shyriiwook than anything.

Directly behind her, she sensed someone else enter the cargo hold. Jolee. _Damn it_.

The distraction was fleeting, but it was still almost enough to get her skewered. She managed to twist aside by the skin of her teeth, her lightweight armour just about holding, though the next few seconds were spent almost entirely on the defensive, and for her pains she took another couple of minor follow-up hits.

By the time the situation was stabilised, her breath was coming hard and fast and she could feel sweat running thickly down her back. The one consolation she had was that Gare was also puffing, perspiration gleaming on his brow and mingling with the flowing blood.

The fight had already lasted longer than was usual. Now they were both at the stage where the razor edge of their reflexes had been blunted, and any hits were likely to inflict more and more serious harm, turning into a bloody and crippling contest of attrition, until one of them eventually collapsed from cumulative injuries and exhaustion. There was no first blood rule in play.

The frustrating thing was, of course, that she could end it all any time she chose. One quick and easy Force push to take his legs out from under him; one howling wall of fear and confusion to unsteady his defences for just a microsecond.

Except that would be 'cheating', and even in victory, it would nullify the entire point of what she was doing.

_You don't win marks for style_.

She wasn't entirely certain if that was her own thought, or something that was projected from Jolee. Whatever the source, it was spot on. She was allowing the need to win _clean_ to straitjacket her.

Gare apparently saw the flicker in her eyes, and took it as another sign of drifting attention.

This time she took a hit deliberately as she came forward, into his lunge. It wasn't merely another glancing half-blow deflecting from body armour to no real gain, but a raking cut that actually drew blood – and pain – from her upper arm.

Less than textbook as it was, the move allowed her to carry her forward momentum and roll in close, inside his reach. Unable to deploy her own blade effectively at that proximity, she settled for elbowing him hard in the side of his head. As he staggered off-balance, she twisted supplely and threw him, using her hip as a pivot. For all his undoubted skill as a martial artist, he was too badly wrong-footed to effectively counter, and ended hitting the metal of the deck. Hard.

The brutal kick designed to take her legs out from under her and immediately level the playing field was expected, and evaded. Her sword came down as he desperately tried to roll out of reach.

It stopped so close to his throat that it actually sliced through the top couple of layers of skin.

"Yield?" she enquired, displaying her pointy teeth as their eyes locked.

She could see him struggling not to gulp and risk slicing his adam's apple in half in the process. "Yield," he agreed.

With a sharp nod, she lifted the blade away and stepped back. Gare's second crossed quickly to his leader's side, helping him back to his feet with a rather fixed look on his face.

"In accordance to the rules of this contest, I claim victory and all of the rights and rewards there implied." As she spoke, coolly formal, she half-expected either Gare or the second to accuse her of cheating, and that the result of the contest should be nullified. Apparently neither of them was quite collected enough to think of that straight off.

Gare was gingerly probing his head-wound with his fingertips. He glowered at her – _not at all to plan, eh?_

"And?" It was sullen.

"And I have no wish to claim leadership of your cadre. That privilege I grant to you, should you wish to accept it."

She could sense hesitation mixed in with a profound sense of relief. Exactly the result he'd been angling for, even if the means of getting there had included a rather gaping dent to his pride. Apparently, he was capable of swallowing that pride. He managed a rather unsteady half-bow. "I accept your gracious offer, Lady Ban."

"There is, however, one proviso."

Instant, uneasy suspicion flashed in his eyes. "I will, of course, undertake to forswear any vengeance upon you and yours . . ."

"I require rather more than that."

Neither him, nor his second said anything. They simply looked at her.

"As is my _unalienable_ right as victor, I claim one year of service from you, Gare N'Valto, and those you now command. For one year, you will serve me loyally in similar capacity to which you served Seboba the Hutt."

Yuthura again half-expected accusations of cheating to surface, but Gare seemed too stunned to do much more than blink. She briefly wondered if she'd erred in so quickly assigning him leadership, if this was an example of his speed of thought.

It was left to the second to ask: "You have the necessary means of providing for our upkeep?" He seemed to be inwardly struggling to find a way out of this, and repeatedly coming up blank.

"I have the necessary means." One of the credit lines intended to pay Kemo Dreya could be diverted. She turned to address Gare again. "Now, I will leave you to break the news to your fellows. In one hour either yourself, or your chosen representative, will meet with me to draw up formal contracts."

As the two mercenaries walked away, Jolee moved alongside her. She steeled herself inwardly, unable to get any sense of his mood at all – fairly typically.

"Interesting," he said finally, breaking the silence. "Now what, exactly, could the two of you be up to, I wonder?"

She looked at him sidelong. He had the same infuriatingly vague expression he usually wore, for all that she knew it was nothing close to the underlying reality.

"The two of us?" she murmured. "Zaalbar was merely doing me a favour."

"Oh, don't play games with me girl. Give it another twenty or so years, and then you can try. But not now."

Her mouth formed a wry twist. "There's an expression humans have about grandmothers and sucking eggs, isn't there?"

"Now there you go, casting aspersions. I still have all my own teeth, thank you very much. Well . . . except for one. There was this brawl." He scratched the tip of his nose. "Involved a group of off-duty palace guard in a cantina on Onderon, as I recall. They don't take too kindly to ribald ballads about their queen. Very little sense of humour. Something to bear in mind if you're ever passing through that way."

"I'll try to remember that."

"You do that. Now stop trying to sidetrack me, damn it."

Yuthura considered a moment before saying anything. "If you intend on fighting a war, there comes a point where you're going to need an army," she said at last.

For a long time she felt him simply looking at her, seemingly weighing something up. "And this is a war now, is it?"

"I think, inevitably, it is going to be one. Don't you?"

The only answer he gave was to point at her arm. "You're bleeding, girl."

- - -

A thermal detonator exploded thunderously. The pair of Sith troopers closest to the searing flash were hurled against a wall nearly six metres away, crumpling together in a tangled heap.

Bastila flinched as the backwash of heat flowed over her. Her Dark Jedi opponent pressed in hard, straining to take advantage. Their double-bladed lightsabers – red and yellow respectively – locked together tightly, spitting and crackling as they strained against each other.

Close to hers, his face was chubby; soft and almost boyish – not a Sith face at all, apart for the most virulently yellow eyes she'd ever seen. He grimaced and groaned, pushing and straining, sweating profusely as he forced her slowly backwards with his greater weight and muscle strength.

Her attention was split in two as she struggled vainly to hold him off. Part of her was away in the next chamber with _him, _striving to maintain the thread of her Battle Meditation, feeling Republic soldiers fall and die, for all her efforts as the black avalanche of _his_ power swept over them. She was stretched too thin, slowly failing on both fronts, unable to focus fully on one task or the other. It felt as if she was standing, one foot on either side of a yawning abyss, as it widened inexorably beneath her.

The Dark Jedi spat into her face from about half a metre away.

She didn't even flinch. There wasn't enough of her there to be distracted. In fact, it had almost entirely the opposite effect as intended, strengthening her focus as a glutinous line of his spittle ran thickly down her cheek.

As he grinned at her mockingly, she butted him hard in the face, right between their interlocked blades. His nose crunched, spurting blood as her forehead squashed it flat.

He howled, pain and rage together, reeling back from her. The sensation of another Republic soldier dying, the life choked brutally out of him, made her finishing stroke waver clumsily, and he was able to deflect it aside, coming back at her snarling in fury.

For a moment she was nonplussed to see that one of his eyes had stopped being yellow, and was now a rather mild looking shade of blue. Belatedly, she realised he must be wearing contact lenses – presumably to make his rather cherubic looks more fierce and intimidating.

That, somehow, was far more distracting than being spat at – too human and personalising a detail. As he came at her in a rage-driven flurry, she was driven rapidly backwards.

Gradually she stabilised the situation, her opponent's swings becoming more and more wildly erratic as his momentum faltered. Across from her, Canderous had engaged the other Dark Jedi, keeping him from intervening, and was in the process of brutally and systematically dismantling him. He seemed to be doing a far better job of it than she was.

Malefic was getting closer fast. There was no one left to resist him. Phantom footsteps pounded, echoing through her skull.

Her opponent bellowed incoherently, overcome by frustration that she was still standing, desperate for victory – and the prestige it would grant – before his Dark Lord arrived.

She caught another wild saber-stroke effortlessly, deflecting it upwards and ducking under it, coming inside his guard. A short, stabbing cut pierced halfway through his thigh, and as his leg buckled beneath him, the other end of her saber took him beneath the chin, emerging through the back of his skull.

Canderous, meanwhile, caught his own opponent's lightsaber on his vibrosword, pushed it out wide, then stepped in close. He picked the Dark Jedi up bodily, slamming the man back against the wall, before proceeding to messily stave in the front of his skull with repeated blows from a heavy, armour-plated fist. The crunching noises that carried over the prevailing din made Bastila feel distinctly ill.

The doors opened.

A wave of Force like a hurricane led the way through, picking up battling Republic and Sith soldiers alike, and scattering them like chaff. It caught Bastila full on, sending her tumbling backwards. As she landed, she came within millimetres of impaling herself on her own lightsaber, the brilliant yellow blade humming fiercely next to her cheek.

The body of the Dark Jedi she'd just killed caught her a glancing blow as he bounced past. Splitting pain passed through her skull with the force of the impact.

She blinked, eyes struggling to focus on the figure framed in the doorway. A huge, bloody red idol of doom, more machine of war than living person. Her Force sense of the crown overwhelmed all but the vaguest sense of the person wearing it.

One of the Republic commandos recovered enough to take a pot-shot at him. The blaster bolt splashed off the energy shields surrounding Malefic with a sharp crack, deflecting away.

Grimly, painfully, Bastila hauled herself up onto her hands and knees. She could only watch, though, as Malefic gestured towards the man who'd fired at him. The taste of dark Force energy, flowing all around, was a bitter poison in the back of her throat.

The Republic soldier jerked upright like a puppet yanked hard by invisible strings. He lifted into the air, floating, and Bastila could sense the terrified panic radiating from him as he struggled vainly to resist. She tried to reach out to him – to snatch him free of the Dark Lord's grip – but her effort bounced off, as if hitting a solid glass wall.

Abruptly, there was a massive shift of air pressure. Bastila's ears popped. There was a horrible sound of tendons rupturing and cartilage tearing, then finally of bones cracking and splintering. When it cut off, what was left of the man dropped back to the deck – a misshapen sack of flesh held together mostly by his armour.

Shaking, still able to feel the grim aftershock of the man's death, Bastila made it to her feet.

Malefic's gaze – the pale silver light spilling from the visor of his helmet anyway – turned slowly until it settled on her. There it stopped.

"Bastila Shan." His voice sounded almost polite, far softer than she'd expected, with a faint suggestion of sibilance to it. "I know that the Jedi are overstretched these days, but are you really all they could manage to send against me?"

Her throat felt dry; cracked. Her head was pounding. "The Jedi aren't even remotely interested in you."

He chuckled. "Then it seems that the diversions I arranged have all worked perfectly."

She started to open her mouth to say something else, when she noticed a small, spherical object arcing gently through the air straight towards him. Another thermal detonator.

As her gaze touched it, his head snapped round. He raised a hand, palm outwards, and batted it away using the Force. She dropped flat.

It landed in a tangled clump of Republic and Sith soldiers, still dazed and groggily trying to right themselves from Malefic's initial entrance. A fraction of a second later, it detonated.

The shockwave from the explosion felt like a giant fist pummelling hard into her back. The breath blasted from her body as it hurled her forward, coming to rest directly in front of Darth Malefic on her hands and knees. Her lightsaber jolted free of her grasp and rolled away, nudging against the toes of Malefic's boots before coming to a halt. Someone's severed and badly charred leg thudded down beside her.

As she struggled to draw breath back into her lungs, Canderous – the source of the thermal detonator – attacked Malefic head on.

The Sith Lord's double-bladed lightsaber ignited with a snap-hiss, coming across to parry a blow that would have cleft him from left shoulder through to right hip had it connected. An unrelenting sequence of crunching attacks drove Malefic steadily backwards, yanking his defences this way and that. Just for an instant it looked like Canderous might actually defeat the Sith Lord in that initial onslaught, the tip of his vibrosword scoring a deep groove across the front of Malefic's breastplate. A well aimed follow-up kick sent Malefic staggering backwards.

Moving in to exploit the opening he'd worked, Canderous was caught by another brutally powerful Force wave. It sent him tumbling backwards, bouncing and spinning, his heavy armour squealing as it slid across the metal of the deck.

In that moment, Bastila lunged. She snatched up her fallen lightsaber and rolled forward, directly towards Malefic. Caught with his attention still diverted towards Canderous, almost completely off-guard, he was unable to shift his stance in time . . .

She drove a lightsaber blade straight through his personal shields and hilt deep into his lower abdomen.

- - -

Tamar could sense his quarry somewhere about a hundred metres ahead, although they remained out of sight.

He was closing in quickly now, after almost half a day's chase since the ambush at the marketplace. Wind whined continuously through the arid canyons of Nawathwai's endless cold, stony desert, swirling up sand and grit and reducing visibility to the low tens of metres.

He'd escaped from the sniper by snatching up a rusting engine block leaning against an empty market stall via the Force, then hurling it through the wall the sniper had just put a dinner-plate size hole in. Rotten and crumbling plastocrete had given way with a crash, creating an impromptu doorway, which he'd promptly dived through, just ahead of another sniper-shot.

That hadn't been the end of it of by any means.

The sniper had still, apparently, been able to keep track of him through the walls – whether through a thermal-imaging scope, or some other means. He'd ended up desperately evading pot-shots taken straight through the old and weak plastocrete as he wove his way between the empty shelves of a long abandoned storehouse. If not for the aid of the Force in anticipating those shots, he'd have been dead several times over.

Each shot, though, had enabled him to get a clearer mental fix on the sniper's position, and work his way round through the interior of the buildings surrounding the marketplace towards them. Eventually, as he'd started to get close, the sniper had upped and run for it.

That had left something of a dilemma. Chase down the sniper. Chase down the hooded, Force-sensitive individual he'd first sensed. Or let them both go, and try to make a meeting that he strongly suspected wasn't going to be happening anymore.

In the end, he'd opted for the middle of the three options, figuring that this person was likely to know more than a hired assassin.

Keeping his target's faint but distinctive Force-spoor fixed firmly in his head, Tamar had spent several hours of cat and mouse pursuit through the semi-derelict outskirts of Natora Head. Occasionally he would catch glimpses of his quarry's back in the distance, but he never managed to get any closer than that.

When his target grabbed a speeder, Tamar had followed suit. The rather decrepit and not altogether safe-looking heap he'd chosen to steal had been selected solely because it had a security system that he could disable relatively quickly – a length of chain tied to a metal post.

After some rather frantic tearing through Natora's streets, the pursuit had moved out into the surrounding desert. Over the past couple of hours they'd covered somewhere over four hundred kilometres through the continuous sandstorm, the terrain at first flat and featureless, then gradually becoming more rough and undulating, passing through deep and winding gullies carved millions of years ago when water had run freely on Nawathwai's surface.

During that time, he'd gradually lost ground, for all he'd been pushing his speeder right to the limits – and at times, several percentile points beyond. About five minutes ago, though, just when he'd been in danger of loosing the spoor entirely, he'd become aware that the person he was pursuing had abruptly stopped moving.

As he'd closed in, he'd slowed his speeder down to a crawl, looking out for an ambush that had never come, before finally ditching the heap of junk a short way back, hidden around a bend in the canyon.

"Tee, you have any way of seeing what's up ahead?" Unless his quarry had run out of fuel, or had some other kind of mechanical problem, they were unlikely to have stopped in the middle of nowhere simply for the hell of it.

There was a slight delay before a response came. The beeps and whistles told him that Nawathwai's satellite system, while eminently sliceable, was far too sparse and primitive to penetrate the storm cover. It hardly came as a surprise, but it wasn't exactly what he'd wanted to hear.

Suddenly the swirling wall of dust and grit parted in front of him like a curtain being drawn back. He got a brief glimpse of a red sandstone cliff face, looming startlingly out of nothing in front of him. If he'd still been going full tilt on the speeder, he'd have had about a tenth of second's warning before a sudden and rather terminal impact.

There was a diagonal line of steep and precarious steps carved into the rock. About halfway up, maybe fifty metres above Tamar's position, he saw the figure he'd been chasing, robes flapping wildly in the wind. They seemed to be looking directly down at him, and he had a fleeting, burning impression of their eyes meeting. Then the storm closed back in, and the figure was gone again.

Tamar drew his blaster-pistol and redoubled his pace.

A speeder – in rather better condition than the one he'd stolen – had been dumped at the bottom of the steps. As he sprinted around it, he got a brief flash of warning through the Force.

A fraction of a second later, the speeder exploded.

- - -

The moment stood crystallised in time, the entire universe frozen mid-step. Malefic seemed to be staring down at her, almost in curiosity, silver light from his visor spilling over her.

Bastila fractured the moment; yanked her lightsaber blade upwards, still buried hilt-deep in his armour – a disembowelling stroke.

Nothing happened. There was no sense of pain from Malefic. No sense of hurt, or weakness. He simply stood there in front of her. Belatedly, she noticed the hissing, sputtering noise her lightsaber blade was making, and realised that it was only penetrating through the top few millimetres of his armour before the beam short-circuited and gave out.

There was a layer of cortosis fibre laminated between the red metal plates of Malefic's armour.

Even as the realisation hit home, Malefic backhanded her, almost casually, across the face.

The impact sent her sprawling full length across the deck, her skull ringing, her jaw gone instantly and entirely numb. She tried to move, but her limbs had turned to rubber, and she dropped back with an incoherent groan. Bloody drool splattered from the corner of her mouth, her vision distorting as the world around her gyrated through slow, disorienting loops. She was dimly aware of the Sith Lord's lightsaber lifting – a red lightning flash – but couldn't do anything about it, unable to make her body respond, let alone reach the Force.

The finishing stroke never came.

She waited and waited, but it never arrived. There was a repeated hard, sparking-cracking sound that she eventually realised was a lightsaber and vibrosword clashing repeatedly together.

_Canderous_.

Dark Force clouds gathered like thunderheads. It was almost as if she could see through Malefic's armoured outer shell to a hollow wraith of darkness bound within, crackling with malevolence. The crown seemed to shine with a kind of negative light, dominating everything. He was driving Canderous inexorably backwards, metre by relentless metre.

A half-choked scream was dragged from her throat as she _forced_ herself to focus, refusing to surrender to the lullingly seductive tides of unconsciousness. The Force, as she drew on it, was ice-cold water – refreshing and agonising at once, clearing her head but leaving her scraped completely raw. Her jaw throbbed. She thought it might be broken. Groaning, she dragged herself first to her knees, then – legs shaking violently – to her feet.

By most standards, Canderous was a big man. In combat, he usually had advantages of strength and reach over opponents, and knew exactly how to make those advantages pay. Not this time. Malefic was one of the few individuals Bastila had seen, outside of Wookiees, who could have stood toe to toe with Darth Malak and not been overshadowed.

Malefic's lightsaber flashed time and again, in brutal, relentless strokes.

Each time, Canderous parried. Each time, he was forced to give up another step of ground. His every attempt at countering was turned aside with peremptory ease, and the attempts became less and less frequent. She could sense him tiring by the moment.

Jaw throbbing, grotesquely swollen and locked in place, she shaped the Force and channelled it towards Canderous, trying to strengthen and reinforce, sweeping away his fatigue. The effort made her stagger, sweat stinging her eyes. She wanted to throw up, but there didn't seem to be anything inside her.

Malefic batted Canderous's guard down with a brutally pummelling stroke, the reverse end of his doubled-bladed saber whipping round before the Mandalorian could recover. As Canderous desperately swayed back in an effort to evade, it scorched a black gouge through his chest-plate.

It barely did more than brush across his skin, but Bastila still felt his pain, reflected back across the Force link as if it was her own. She whimpered involuntarily at the burning sensation in her chest, and attempted to redouble the flow of Force.

Canderous counterattacked without pause, catching Malefic slightly by surprise, vibrosword raising sparks off the Sith Lord's armour. For a second or so the momentum of the contest reversed, Canderous driving Malefic onto the back foot, regaining most of the ground he'd lost, and scoring another glancing hit which deflected off the Sith Lord's shoulder plate . . .

Malefic simply lashed out with another pummelling Force wave.

This time she could feel that Canderous was expecting it. He managed to twist to one side, so that only the periphery of it caught him. It still sent him spinning backwards close to four metres, even if he did manage to stay upright this time.

Before Malefic could close the gap again, Bastila launched herself at him. Or at least, lurched clumsily in his approximate direction. The floor was still tilting oddly, and she realised clinically through the pain in her head that she had a concussion. It felt like she was muffled from the world by a choking layer of cotton wool, her feet bound inside clumsy lead-filled boots.

Malefic wheeled on her, catching her attack easily and sending her staggering with the sheer power of his riposte. Her arms felt numb from the impact, and her balance was completely shot. His next attack almost drove her to her knees.

Before he could overwhelm her defences entirely, Canderous was back alongside her, pressing him hard.

With two opponents for him to face, it suddenly became a much more even fight. If Bastila had been closer to a hundred percent, she and Canderous might even have held the upper hand between them. As it was, they managed to work well enough together that Malefic was never able to isolate either one of them for long enough to truly make his physical advantages tell.

Even so, they didn't manage to work any effective openings themselves. Malefic wasn't simply a freakishly powerful brute; he was also a frighteningly good swordsman.

"You're being played," she tried to say as the fight temporarily settled into stalemate. Unfortunately, her jaw refused to work properly, and her tongue felt like it had swollen far too big for her mouth. The noise that came out was largely unrecognisable as speech.

Something in it seemed to get through to Malefic though. He attacked so hard that she struggled to keep a proper grip on her lightsaber as she parried. Canderous came quickly to the rescue, forcing Malefic back again. By that time, she was panting raggedly, her shoulder joints screaming.

Behind her one of the survivors from the thermal detonator made a low, incoherent noise. She recognised it from army field hospitals – the sound of someone too badly hurt to have the energy to scream. She tried again, fractionally more coherently this time, to speak. She would have made an absolutely rotten ventriloquist. "I mean it." _I ean 't._ "Daragba . . . the Vision Well was . . ." _Ragba te isn ell._

Malefic wasn't, apparently, interested in conversation. He came at her relentlessly, without pausing.

Parrying another particularly vicious assault, Bastila got the set of her body slightly wrong, and the impact that juddered through her frame caused her left leg to buckle beneath her. A wrenching gasp was torn from her lips as she dropped to one knee. One hand lost its grip on her lightsaber hilt, leaving her wide open . . .

Canderous's vibrosword came across her to intercept, blocking Malefic's lightsaber centimetres from her face.

It was a mistake. A Mandalorian warrior – the Mandalorian warrior that Canderous had once been – would have let Malefic take her head off without a second thought. A fraction of a second later his vibrosword would have driven up, unstoppably, beneath the Sith Lord's armpit, sundering through armour as if it wasn't there and ripping right through his chest cavity. Victory would have been achieved, albeit victory with a sacrifice.

Mandalorians had always understood the cold necessity of sacrifice when it came to matters of war.

She sensed something like surprise from Canderous. Inescapable knowledge of his own error.

Malefic reversed his stroke with lightning rapidity. The other end of the double-bladed saber came down across Canderous's elbow joint – took his right arm clean off and insta-cauterized the stump. Vibrosword and armour-plated forearm clanged loudly as they hit the deck.

She felt the onset of his shock as if it was her own; gasped with him in sympathetic unison as he reeled backwards.

Her own lightsaber swung in desperation for Malefic's legs, forcing the Sith Lord into a hasty parry. Peripherally she was aware of Canderous folding up; falling to his knees.

Malefic battered at her, subtlety sacrificed for overwhelming power – a desire to be finished with this. She fell back rapidly, yielding ground in a kind of ungainly, backwards staggering half-run, drawing him away from the fallen Mandalorian. After about the fourth of fifth desperate block, her arms ached so badly that she could barely lift them.

Then she ran out of space to retreat into, the curve of the wall at her back. Hers and Malefic's blades locked together, which she knew then and there was a fatal error, but she didn't have any choice in the matter.

His strength was overpowering. Grimly she felt her own blade being twisted down and round, her efforts to stop it about as useful as trying to hold back an avalanche with her bare hands. It came closer and closer to her left thigh, until she could feel the fierce heat radiating from it. As she tried to resist, it felt like her arms were wrenching from their sockets.

Frantically, she lashed out with the Force – a driving spike of will aimed at the dark core of his mind.

It stuck what seemed to be an impervious wall, bouncing off uselessly. He struck straight back at her overwhelmingly, slicing brutally through her mental defences.

Distantly, she heard herself cry out. One of her biceps ripped in an agonising flare, her arm giving way. Her own lightsaber blade was wrenched down abruptly by Malefic's, straight into the meat of her thigh, slicing deeply through muscle tissue and frying the surrounding flesh black.

She collapsed with a strangled gasp as her leg buckled beneath her. Her lightsaber was torn from her grasp, bouncing away across the deck.

Something hefty hit Malefic hard on the side of his helmeted head. He staggered with the impact. His saber-stroke, jolted awry, passed just over her head, giving her a lopsided impromptu haircut, but nothing worse than that.

The object that had hit him, Bastila noted numbly as it landed a few feet in front of her, was Canderous's severed forearm, encased in armour plating.

Malefic whirled on the Mandalorian, who'd managed to haul himself upright again. His regenerative implant, Bastila realised, would have blunted the worst affects of the shock by now. He kicked at something lying in front of him, sending it sliding rapidly across the deck just before another brutally powerful Force wave from Malefic slammed straight into him.

This time he went down hard, hitting the deck with an audible crunch. He gave no sign of moving, let alone getting up.

The sliding object passed straight between Malefic's planted feet, coming to a halt directly in front of her. Her eyes were slow to focus on it. Canderous's vibrosword.

Body responded quicker than mind, guided by instinct or Force, or maybe both. She picked it up with her still functional arm and lunged from her knees with every ounce of her strength and bodyweight behind it.

Malefic had sensed her movement and was in the process of spinning back towards her, incredibly fast and agile given his size and bulky armour . . .

The vibrosword beat his lightsaber, passing just beneath its leading edge and angling upwards. It drove through his armour with a shrieking metallic crunch, piercing right through the left side of his abdomen, before emerging from his back.

Time again seemed to stand still, almost exactly symmetric with before. The tableau was the same. Her on her knees, a blade seemingly driven through the Sith Lord's torso as he stared down at her, the sliver light from his visor illuminating her in a pale aura.

There was one key difference this time, though. Cortosis fibre might be useful for repelling lightsabers, but against over a metre of ultra-sharp, powered metal it was pretty much neither here nor there.

His lightsaber fell from his hands, bounced, extinguished.

- - -

Morrigance was yanked back from her reverie. In front of her, the cradle gleamed oddly. She thought, uneasily, that she was standing several paces closer to it than she had been, with no knowledge of the intervening steps. Behind it, the twisted mass of filaments and pipes stirred with patterns of light and shade that the ambient lighting couldn't quite account for, and she could still vaguely sense the ship's – for want of a better word – mind, watching her: utterly vast and alien. Her attempts to communicate with it had proved . . . frustrating.

Malefic's pain, transmitted and amplified via the crown, quickly drowned out her awareness of the ship in a tide of dark and violent ripples. He was very badly hurt, she could tell at once. In fact, without the Force to sustain him, he would very probably be dead already.

She let out an annoyed breath – touched the plain, dull metal ring she wore upon one finger. Concentrating, she sent a command across the void, directly to his head.

He answered her call. Because of the crown, he had long since lost the option of resisting.

- - -

"Our Lord needs our help."

Admiral Bortha jolted at Illarie's words. The symbols in front of him, which had almost been starting to make some kind of sense, swam out of focus, and he completely lost the thread of his thoughts. He looked round at the Dark Jedi sourly, but she was already striding rapidly towards the bridge's exit.

"Our _Lord_ ordered us to remain here," he called out after her. His voice sounded small to his own ears, anything but that of an admiral.

There was no response, so he tried again. "You remember what he does to those who try to 'help' unasked for? Mek Valloon for instance."

She stopped; glanced back at him. There was no attempt to even slightly mask the sneer. "How does one so spineless rise so high in the Sith Fleet? Please, I'd like to know."

Their eyes locked, neither of them backing down. Eventually Illarie bared her teeth. "I have _his_ order." A hand came up to touch the side of her head, and briefly, he saw a ghost of unease in her. It quickly vanished underneath the sneering surface. "He commands us to join his side. _Now_."

She started walking again, boot heels tapping out a rapid staccato rhythm on the deck.

Gritting his teeth, Bortha had to halfway run to keep up with her.

He didn't know how long they strode through the vast ship's silent and eerily deserted chambers. Long enough, and at such a pace that he was badly out of breath by the time Illarie halted abruptly in front of him. He barely stopped himself from blundering into her back.

Suddenly there was an ominous sense of pressure on the air that even he could feel. Static and something else. Something bad was coming. Something terrible. Part of him wanted to turn and run, but Fleet discipline still bound him in too tightly. The doors in front of them opened.

Bortha stared, wide-eyed.

Darth Malefic lurched through, his gait halfway between badly malfunctioning droid and lifelong cantina drunk at throwing out time. It took Bortha's mind a second or so to process the fact that the object sticking through the left side of his torso was a vibrosword. It took him even longer to realise that the liquid flowing down his armoured left leg, spattering across the floor in coin-sized droplets, and trailing away into the distance behind him in a trail of unevenly spaced footprints, was blood.

The Dark Lord's breathing rasped like a rusty saw blade.

Illarie rushed across to him, and he all but collapsed on top of her. Bortha could clearly see the strain in her posture as she struggled under his overbearing weight to keep him upright.

Leaning on her, Malefic's hands groped uncoordinatedly for the hilt of the embedded vibrosword, gripping it tightly. He made a high, thin noise that reminded Bortha slightly of superheated steam escaping from a pressure valve.

He looked away as the sword came out, though the sound effects were just as bad as the visuals would have been: a low, strangled grown; a sudden, thick and copious splattering of liquid; then a heavy metallic clang, followed by grimly agonised, almost bestial panting.

When Bortha looked back, Malefic and Illarie were both on their knees upon the deck. Bizarrely, the sight reminded him of a weird parody of doomed lovers in a stage play, seeking one last kiss from each other before dying tragically in each other's embrace.

Malefic's huge, red-gauntleted hands gripped either side of Illarie's shaven head, which suddenly looked tiny and bird-like, delicately fragile. His forehead hung forward at such an angle that his crown almost looked as if it was in danger of sliding off.

Abruptly Malefic's grip tightened and he drew her closer.

_Difficult to kiss through that helmet_. It was an insane, disconnected thought.

Bortha heard Illarie yelp in pain. Malefic's fingers gouged brutally into her flesh, crushingly strong for all his current weakness. Abruptly, the yelp became an all out scream. Fierce, orange-tinted light suddenly shone from her flesh, drawing her in x-ray, before bursting free of her eyes and mouth in blazing beams that were drawn directly into Malefic's body.

Bortha could smell something a little bit like charbroiling meat. It tickled at his nostrils. Then, abruptly, he twisted away, gagging – emptying the contents of his stomach noisily on the deck.

Behind him, he heard a soft, almost gentle thud. His neck muscles dragged his gaze back, half involuntarily. Part of him gibbered that he didn't want to look. _He didn't want to damn well look!_

What was left of Illarie resembled a papier-mache doll – a lifeless, hollowed out, mummified shell that might disintegrate and blow away in a stiff breeze. Everything remotely to do with life had been sucked straight out of her. As he watched, glassy-eyed, Malefic unfolded himself smoothly and stood up. The flow of blood had slowed to an intermittent dripping.

That glowing silver visor now fixed firmly upon Bortha. The Dark Lord's breathing sawed as harshly as before, though it seemed much more vigorous now.

"Come, Admiral. Follow me."

There was no refusing _that_.

- - -

Tamar rode the outer edge of the explosion up the cliff-face in a truly enormous Force-jump. At the apex of the leap, when gravity started to kick in again, he hit a wrist control. A grappling hook deployed from his armour, micro-razors embedding in the sandstone and locking tight.

He fell back a short distance before the rope trailing from the grappling hook jerked taut, managing to bring his legs up and brace himself a fraction before he hit the rockface. Even so, it knocked a good portion of the breath from his body.

Steadying himself, he glanced around quickly to get his bearings.

He'd made it more than halfway up the narrow stairs. Glancing up gave him a brief glimpse of his quarry's back, before they reached the cave at the top of the steps and disappeared inside. He could sense tightly controlled borderline panic flowing from them. That definitely hadn't gone quite to plan.

Quickly, he unspooled more rope from the grappling hook, lowering himself until his feet touched the steps, before disconnecting himself from it. A blaster shot cracked off his energy shield and deflected away, spinning him round and making him stagger back a couple of steps before he managed to recover his balance.

His heart thudded as he swayed vertiginously on the edge. The drop back to the canyon floor looked much more substantial from up here than it had from down below.

Flattening himself against the wall, a second blaster shot missed him narrowly.

Coming to the rapid conclusion that survival was far more important than stealth, or concealing his identity, he drew his lightsaber from a concealed compartment in one of the thigh plates of his armour. The cyan blade glowed fiercely through the swirling dust, instinctively moving to deflect the third and forth shots harmlessly away. His free hand drew his own plaster pistol, firing up into the cave mouth where he could sense the gunman.

Steadily he started to advance up the steps.

Another blaster shot spat his way, a second gunman joining the first. Tamar reached up towards him with the Force and pulled.

His intent had simply been to yank the gun from the man's hands, but a moment later, he heard a terrified wail and caught a brief glimpse of a camouflaged figure tumbling from the cave mouth, out into the canyon. He winced at the sound of a crunching impact that came a moment later from below.

The first gunman popped abruptly up from cover, gun blazing. Tamar's lightsaber intercepted easily, and a calmly precise countershot into the darkness above ended things, taking the man squarely in the head.

Tamar pushed away pity and revulsion as he felt the man's life extinguish. He started to run up the last couple of dozen steps.

Inside, only the first few metres of the cave were natural. Beyond that, a tunnel proceeded deeper into the cliff, supporting props spaced every few metres and electric lights strung along the ceiling. Several of them flickered and hummed, while others had broken entirely leaving deep, unevenly spaced puddles of shadow.

Tamar could sense his target a short distance ahead, no longer moving, and hastened forward, switching his lightsaber off so it's humming didn't give him away, but still keeping both it and the blaster in hand.

After a distance of about fifty metres, the tunnel turned abruptly to the left, opening out into a vast, cavernous space. Looming out of the gloom in the centre of that space was a ship – some kind of Corellian-designed light freighter, not entirely dissimilar to the _Ebon Hawk_. Overhead the cavern's ceiling was artificial, and from the look of it could open as and when required. Some kind of secret smuggler's landing pad, obviously. Presumably, it dated back to a time when Nawathwai wasn't quite so blatantly lawless, and such subterfuge was actually necessary.

Edging around the freighter's bulk, Tamar heard voices from a few metres ahead. He stopped, dropping into a crouch in the cover of the freighter's landing gear.

One of the voices was female. He didn't manage to pick out any of the words, but he did get enough of a sense of her mind as she spoke to identify her. The sniper. She was Force sensitive too, he noted. It was very mild, so she might not even be aware of it, and it hadn't registered with him before, but at this proximity, it was unmistakeable.

The second voice was male and belonged to the person he'd been following. The breath-mask made it sound more harsh and guttural than it probably was, though he only managed to pick up snatches. ". . . Nix and Jaren . . . holding him off . . . don't imagine it'll be long . . . persistent bastard . . . damned strong . . . We need to . . . powered up and gone."

Tamar started edging forward.

"Him?" he managed to pick out from the woman's much quieter voice. Then, after missing something too low to pick up: ". . . the worm never showed . . ."

"Could be _him_," The man agreed. Tamar could hear him much more clearly now "If it is, _she'll_ want to know . . ."

Tamar stopped again. _She'll_ . . . He shook his head, forcing himself to concentrate on the here and now instead of letting his thoughts wander away down wildly speculative highways.

He could see both of them now, standing at the foot of the freighter's entrance ramp.

"No time," the man was saying, turning away from the woman and starting rapidly up the ramp.

The woman was looking straight towards him. Like everyone else who ventured out on Nawathwai's surface, she wore a breath mask that covered the lower portion of her face. Her eyes, however, were not covered by the normal goggles you'd expect to see, but a plain black cloth wrapping.

_A Miraluka_.

Suddenly he knew how she'd been able to shoot at him so readily through the walls earlier on. He likewise knew that she could 'see' him perfectly now, for all the cover and shade he was notionally concealed by.

Her pistol shot came before he could react, and hit him directly in the centre of his chest. His shields just about held, but the kick of the impact was enough to send him sprawling onto his backside with a feeling akin to having just been punched by an angry Wookiee.

A series of follow up shots stitched across the ground, missing by centimetres as he rolled desperately to evade. One hit part of the ships' landing gear, knocking a sizable chunk of metal loose.

As he came upright again, he hurled a wave of Force at her and ignited his lightsaber. She managed to evade the Force wave, leaping backwards with the grace of a trained gymnast. On 'seeing' the lightsaber, she obviously decided on discretion being the better part of valour, and turned and ran.

Before he could even think about following, Force lightning crackled around him, stripping away the last remnants of his shields, and sending him reeling forwards.

He whirled on the man, standing at the top of the ramp. The effects of the electricity left a deep-seated ache in his teeth.

"Perhaps we can just talk?" Tamar suggested, finally breaking the lingering silence as they faced off with each other.

_Or perhaps not_. The man moved to hit a control to raise the ramp. Instantly, Tamar picked up the lump of landing gear that the woman had shot loose, and hurled it at him with the Force.

It hit home smack in the middle of his forehead. He crumpled bonelessly.

Tamar let out a breath. The female sniper had already made it out of the cavern, and he could still sense her running. He was content enough to let her go, leaping onto the steadily closing ramp and allowing it to carry him up into the main body of the freighter.

His quarry, finally run down, was well and truly unconscious, flat out on the deck in front of him. A quick check of his pulse told him it was no more or less serious than that.

He called in to T3. A short exchange later, a rendezvous had been arranged, the utility droid to fly their ship out here and pick him up. Before their conversation broke off, T3 let him know that Hulas had finally been in touch, leaving another message.

"Play it then," he said resignedly

There was a fractional pause, before the link crackled to life again.

"My apologies for not being able to keep our scheduled meeting." For some reason, just the tone of the Rodian's voice managed to set Tamar's teeth on edge. "Unfortunately, I learned that our communication had become compromised. You may be in danger. I pray that this message does not reach you too late."

Tamar stifled a sigh.

"It is still absolutely imperative that we have our discussion, and I suggest we rearrange . . ."

Barely listening to the remainder of Hulas's recorded words, Tamar bent down and, with a stifled grunt of effort, picked the unconscious man up, hefting him across his shoulder like a grain sack. Although by no means huge, he was more than heavy enough, and it was a struggle to get the weight comfortably settled.

The recording stopped.

"Well, I suppose it's the thought that counts," Tamar muttered sourly. "Okay Tee, let Hulas know that I'll get back to him. When it suits _me_."

- - -

"My apprentice. You appear to have gotten lost. You're on the wrong ship."

On the surface, at least, Darth Malefic's voice was mild. Morrigance didn't let that fool her. She'd been following his darkly furious presence inside her head for the last hour, ever since his shuttle had started the flight across the void from the flagship.

She turned around to face him slowly. "No, my Lord, I think you'll find I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be."

She felt his anger flare, but it still didn't reach the surface. He seemed to be too busy inspecting their surroundings. The level of his control surprised her slightly.

"Interesting," he said at length. "For some reason, I'd assumed the chamber in the flagship would be unique."

"That would be rather a major vulnerability, don't you think?" she responded neutrally. "Take out the flagship, and the entire fleet is crippled. No, any one of the vessels can act as the command ship if required."

"How very sensible."

Her gaze moved past Malefic's shoulder to the figure trailing nervously behind. _Bortha. First name Vorsk. Captain of the Excelsior, _her memory supplied. Competent enough, supposedly, though he'd never made much of an impression on her the couple of previous occasions on which they'd met. He was, she sensed, absolutely terrified.

Calmly she reached out to him through the Force and froze him securely in position. A random, unpredictable element right now would not be a good thing.

"Now that wasn't very polite, was it?" Malefic's voice was altogether less mild this time. He started walking towards her, beside the cradle, apparently entirely unaware that he did so because she wished it.

"My Lord?" She feigned incomprehension.

"Release the good Admiral, my apprentice. Then be so good as to apologise to him."

"The _Admiral_, my Lord?"

"A recent promotion. I'm sure that you'll be wanting to extend your congratulations to him." She could feel the Force flowing around Darth Malefic in a vast and angry maelstrom. The crown's crystal spikes were glowing brighter and brighter with each step that he took towards her.

Morrigance inclined her head in Bortha's direction. "My congratulations, Admiral Bortha. I do hope you are enjoying the fruits of your labours?"

The fear emanating from the paralysed figure, if anything, seemed to have increased in intensity. At least he had a sense of realism, she thought. Which was a lot more than could be a said for most Sith.

Malefic was standing less than two metres in front of her now, a looming monstrosity. She could clearly see the jagged rent in his armour – the now dried blood that surrounded it. She could also clearly sense the pain he was in. It fed the burning anger, and from what she could tell, fed the dark Force power flowing through him equally.

A dangerous game, testing the limits of control that the crown gave her like this, she acknowledged inwardly. If she had misjudged, then at this proximity it was very likely to prove fatal.

"I told you to release him."

"So you did," Calmly, and very blatantly, Morrigance turned her back on him. Reaching out with a black-gloved hand, she touched the metal casing of the cradle, causing the front of it to slide open. "Serebos."

The silence became so thick and heavy it was almost like a physical presence there with them. She could sense a note of confusion intermingling with Malefic's anger. Confusion as to why he was just standing there, doing absolutely nothing.

"That name no longer exists . . ." His voice rasped harshly.

"Yes, you changed it after Darth Malak staved your head in. Brain damage gave you an over active sense of melodrama, it seems."

"My apprentice . . ."

Morrigance raised a hand, and he shut up mid-sentence. She could sense his confusion growing exponentially, marked disquiet now puncturing the fury. "I find it interesting that even Darth Auza, who at least had the excuse of never having met me before, eventually had the wit to become suspicious of me. Even if it was far too late in the end. While you, who spent so many weeks instructing me on how to master a lightsaber at Revan's behest, never had a single moment of doubt."

She felt his shock. "Who _are_ you?"

For a time, she didn't answer, seemingly inspecting the cradle in front of her. Finally, she turned back to him. Power vibrated through him, the crown a glowing beacon. She could feel that power straining for release, but it was not able to attain it. _Hers absolutely_. "Guess."

There was no response.

"No ideas? Well, while you think about it, perhaps you'd like to step forward, into there." She gestured towards the cradle.

He did as he was told. He was trying to resist, she sensed – the upper, conscious portions of his mind at least – but the crown had altered the underlying foundations profoundly, and he no longer remotely belonged to himself.

"I spent a long time, struggling to find a way to make use of this fleet." Her voice sounded contemplative – almost musing. "Revan never managed it. Even the fleet's creator never managed it. He didn't fully think through the implications of ships that were alive, you see. Alive and with a will."

She could feel Malefic's hate as he gazed down at her. Calmly, she reached up and around his head, fingers deftly locating the catches on either side of his helmet before springing them and lifting the faceplate away.

"When a person joins with this fleet," she continued, "they become part of it irrevocably. And the fleet becomes a part of them, forevermore inseparable. Control becomes a two way process, and the will of these ships is strong indeed. I have to say I almost kicked myself when I remembered Drochmar's crown; the answer staring me in the face for all that time."

His eyes – if he could make it so, she knew that she would now be suffering all the agonies he was capable of imagining. The patterns of ever-shifting colour on his skin crawled even more frantically than normal, the colour red predominating.

"The crown through which an apprentice once gained control over her master. Now again. And when the _master_ becomes part of the fleet, and the fleet becomes part of him . . ." She left the inference hanging. The cradle clicked softly closed around Malefic's titanic frame.

"Beware of apprentices bearing gifts, my Lord. We are Sith, and all is treachery in the end."

The mass of cables and filaments surrounding Malefic began to stir.

* * *

_Continued thanks to Jedi Boadicea for beta reading. And continued thanks for the wonderfully in depth feedback from all my regular reviewers :). I appreciate it so much._

_Feza, I've watched the last couple of seasons of Babylon 5, though didn't really get heavily into it before that. I think my inspiration for the living ships and joining with them probably came more from Farscape though. You should see some more Carth next chapter._


	15. Caught

**15. Caught**

There was someone sitting in the chair in the corner of the room.

Carth blinked slowly. He probably should have been more surprised than he was. It just seemed inevitable though. Of course someone was sitting in the corner of the room. Why not?

She stood up. Only a she could manage to stand up in quite that way.

"Carth," she said softly, stepping forward, the shadows dropping back and releasing her from their grasp.

"Bliss," he responded. Again, the only surprise was the absence of surprise. _Why shouldn't she be here, sitting in the corner? Ah, yes_ . . . "You're dead."

The Twi'lek woman smiled. It was a sad smile. She looked pale, the rich and vivid yellow of her skin leached away to white by the half-light. For some reason she was dressed exactly like the first time he'd seen her: Sindra – svelte and slinky; walking mantrap. He could smell her perfume. A slim, elegant hand trailed its fingertips along the wall. "I've heard that the Jedi say there is no death."

That part of the Jedi Code that had always bothered Carth. If there was no death, then you could justify almost any action. No price would be too high.

He sat up, the bed sheets pooling around his waist.

_Bed_. Suddenly his teeth were set on edge. Bed was bad. He couldn't quite remember why, but he knew it to be the truth. Unfortunately, he didn't appear to be wearing anything except for a pressure bandage on one side of his torso, just above the hip. He struggled to concentrate on what was in front of him. "Sometimes, I've found, the Jedi can talk a complete load of bantha crap."

She stepped closer. The perfume grew stronger, almost an entity in its own right. "And sometimes, now and again, they actually say something that's worth listening to. It's how it is with most people."

Carth grimaced, rubbing at his eyes. The sense of unease was growing, not fading. "Look, no offence, Bliss. After my wife . . . after my wife _died_, for more than a year, I used to talk to her. Whole, long conversations. There came a point when she started answering back, just as clear as this conversation we're having now. A point where the real world stopped seeming so . . . vital, and I came close to . . ." He stopped, shaking his head. Something was just utterly wrong with this picture . . . Frowning, he fixed her gaze with his. "What I'm saying is, for all that I did like you, I just don't think we really got to know each other well enough to commit to that same kind of after-death relationship."

She smiled that sad smile again. "Yes, a few hours spent fleeing for our lives together is hardly a basis for any kind of longer term commitment, is it?" Her expression hardened. "Get over yourself for a moment here, Carth."

"Get over myself? Hey lady, I'm not the one who's coming unannounced into _your_ bedroom while _you're_ sleeping . . ."

Sleeping? Was that what he'd been doing? _Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad . . ._

Her head tails quivered in momentary amusement. When she spoke again, her voice was pure Sindra. "So let the sheets drop a little lower, fleet boy. Let's see how you measure _up_."

He felt himself flushing. "Look, tell me what you want, or get lost."

"Tsk, and here I was taking all this trouble to come and see you. So ungrateful." Suddenly she was serious again. "I know you feel guilty about leaving me behind. I know that it troubles you when you think about it, and you think about it far too often." Her head tilted to one side, expression grave. "I thought it might help you to know that I'm all right. That I made it through safely, in the end."

He found himself staring at her. "Let me get this straight, Bliss. You call dying, making it through safely?"

After a moment's pause, she shrugged. One hand rested on her hip. "I suppose that, like in so much of life, how you view things depends on where you're standing."

"There is such a thing as taking looking on the bright side too far, you know that?"

Bliss sighed. "I knew you were going to make this difficult, Carth. You're not one to take the easy way, are you? Paranoid pilots . . ." She shook her head. "But I hope there can be an end to this. You made the right choice, and what happened isn't anyone's fault. I have no cause to regret it, and you shouldn't either."

_Then why do you look so sad when you say that_, he thought. Carth kept he his mouth shut on the words though.

"There's another reason you came here, isn't there?" He said after a further pause. Suddenly he was cold, gooseflesh forming on his bare chest. There was something about the situation that he should _know_. Not something that he'd forgotten precisely. More something he was shying away from thinking.

At length, she nodded, lips compressed. He thought then that she looked pained – fearful behind her eyes. "I . . . I want you to try and listen carefully and hear what's being said. To keep an open mind and . . . put aside your instinctive prejudices."

"What's that supposed to mean? What are you talking about, Bliss?"

But she was drifting. Walking away . . .. No, not walking away, more dwindling. The shadows that she'd emerged from seemed to be calling her back to them. When he blinked, she was gone entirely.

He could feel his heart thudding, his mouth uncomfortably dry. There was something else . . . someone else.

"Hello Carth." The voice came from the opposite corner of the room, smooth and mellow with a deeply resonant timbre.

He groped for his gun. It wasn't in any of the usual places: beneath the pillow; on the bedside table; on the floor under the bed.

_Of course not, you're asleep._

"I thought we should try to be civilised about this," the voice continued smoothly. "I have to apologise. The lack of civility between us up to now has been entirely my fault. When you work for the Sith, you get locked into a certain way of doing things – a certain mindset – and it becomes difficult to break free from it. Not that that's an excuse. I just hope you'll understand."

Carth turned and stared at the man.

The face was familiar – dark, handsome, a dazzlingly white smile, neatly razored lines of facial hair. He'd seen that face leaning over him on a bridge in Calius saj Leeloo. The rest – the clothing, stylishly rumpled like a playboy-gambler just retired from a long evening on the casino floor – couldn't have been more different. Even the aura – the shadowy, ill-defined sense of dread – seemed to be reigned in, although it was still present; a faint, bitter aftertaste hanging on the air.

"You're the Catcher." His throat felt dry.

The dazzling smile broadened. "That is how I have become known professionally." He walked across the room, lithely padding, full of coiled power, and sat down in the chair Bliss had vacated. The shadows there seemed a living part of him. "You can call me Naemon if you'd prefer."

"What do you want?"

"Me? Oh, I just want to talk. Surely two grown men are capable of having a conversation without, say . . . trying to kill each other?"

His smile was unwavering. Carth felt an almost overwhelmingly strong urge to try to stave it in. The fear was suddenly equally strong though. "I meant, what do you want with me?" He struggled to pull back – to wake up – but everything around him remained resolutely solid and constant.

The Catcher didn't answer right away. He tilted his head, seemingly contemplating something only he could see. "I am, above everything else, a collector."

"Funny. From what I've seen, I'd have said psychotic killer."

There was no direct response. He steepled his hands together, fingertips touching his lips. "I started collecting twenty years ago. In the dark place, when I was just a boy. I had a talent that none of the others did, though at the time I didn't know that on anything other than an instinctive level."

"You're talking about Adrapos. The plague ships."

The Catcher's eyes focused on Carth's face. Not surprised. Not angry. Not anything that seemed a human emotion. "You've done your homework, I see. As have I."

Carth felt something inside him clench. He tried to judge the distance to the door – how long it would take him to get out of the room if he couldn't wake up. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that I have made it my business to know your business. As I do with all my . . . targets."

"And I'm your target?" Carth's teeth set on edge. "You're an assassin, and you want me dead."

The Catcher tutted, seemingly exasperated that Carth didn't get it. "Today I am not an assassin. One is not totally defined by one's job, is one? You are certainly more than just a pilot, after all. Like I said, above everything else, I am a collector."

"I heard the first time. So what do you 'collect'?" Carth fell silent for a couple of beats, understanding dawning. "Wait a minute. You want to collect _me_?"

The Catcher smiled – a slightly condescending schoolmaster whose slowest pupil has finally caught on. After a moment, the look on his face became strange: almost wistful. "When everyone around me began to die, I tried to save them. I tried _so_ very hard. Of course, I failed, because death is not something that can, or should, be avoided. All I ended up achieving was to prolong the suffering of those I tried to help – made the agony so much worse by drawing it out. Eventually, I realised this. It wasn't a pleasant realisation for me. Finding out that all your good intentions count for nothing, never is, especially when you are just a child trying to help. But it was a _necessary_ realisation."

Carth said nothing. One hand was clenched so tightly that it was sending spasms of pain shooting up his arm. He still didn't wake up though. His surroundings remained unchangeably real.

The Catcher continued, regardless. "After my realisation, I contented myself with easing the others' pain; shepherding them on their way to what lies beyond, and making that transition less frightening."

"You mean, you started killing them."

He snorted. "No. We were all dying. All starving in the darkness. I didn't kill anyone. I simply . . . made the transition easier."

"Right."

"Believe or not, Carth. It changes nothing." He smiled then, the expression disturbing in its intensity. "As more and more of those around me died – companions and acquaintances, then friends and family – I came to realise that, eventually, I was going to be left alone." He shrugged. Something flickered across his face, gone too quickly to read. "I feel no shame in admitting that the prospect scared me. I was eight years old. So when my closest friend was near to passing, I offered to keep him here." He touched the centre of his forehead. "With me. My friend accepted. He was but the first of many. The start of my collection."

Carth stared at him numbly, struggling to digest the meaning of those words.

"There are more than a thousand of us now. A thousand different voices. Immortality of a sort, experiences and foibles preserved instead of being subsumed and lost in the vast, uncaring ocean."

"Bliss . . ." The implications of the earlier visitation sank in. "You utter bastard. You utter . . . Let her go."

"I'm afraid that's impossible, Carth. Even should I want to." He looked almost sad. "She _is_ finding the transition difficult though. She continues to resist, and makes herself suffer in doing so. She is lonely I think. Usually I ensure that those I collect have company, to ease the process of integration, but alas, with her that has thus far proved impossible. When you join us, I think it might help her."

Carth lunged at him.

The Catcher simply gestured calmly.

Suddenly the air around Carth solidified, holding him fast, unable to move a muscle no matter how hard he strained. He felt sweat trickling down the side of his face. His yes bored furiously – and impotently – into the Catcher's face.

"Now, I thought we were trying to be civilized," he chided gently.

"I swear to you, once I wake up from this, I'm going to expend every single ounce of my energy in tracking you down. Then I'm going to kill you."

The Catcher stood up, padding smoothly across the room. Carth's eyes moved to follow, though he couldn't twist his neck around by so much as a millimetre.

The Catcher chuckled. "Well, I wish you luck with that. Really, I do."

Standing in the very periphery of Carth's vision, he bent down and picked something up. It was a towel. For the first time Carth properly took in his surroundings, and the fact they were totally unfamiliar. An upscale hotel perhaps, or even a luxury cabin on a cruise liner. He had no memory of how he had got there, or if he was even _there_. It could just be a product of his dream state. His memories . . . the last thing he could consciously recall, was going with Yolanda to meet one of her contacts in order to arrange safe passage away from Fondor.

The Catcher walked back into the centre of Carth's field of view. He displayed the towel. In the bottom corner, it had a little embroidered logo, part of which was a stylised sun. "The _Sunrider_. Interesting. I'm sure we'll meet again in person soon enough, and you'll get the chance to try to put your rather silly little threat into practise."

Carth glowered at him – said nothing.

"But ask yourself something, Carth. How much, truly, do you value this life you currently have?" That smile again, dazzlingly bright. "When was the last time you were really happy and at peace with yourself? You've had your vengeance. You've found your son. Yes, I know about your son – a profoundly troubled young man, I think we'll both agree. Maybe I can do something to help him. What do you think?" The smile faded. "Yet still, you can't find rest, or the slightest shred of joy. You fight for your Republic still, going through the motions, but you no longer belong to it in any meaningful way. Your life is reduced to serving the man who, ultimately, bears responsibility for the ravaging of your homeworld, because he is the best hope for the future you can see. Is the change I offer really so bad in comparison to all of that?"

After several beats, Carth swore at him. Venomously and at length. Futile, but the best he could manage in the circumstances. He could feel his heart thumping. The terror when he had mentioned Dustil . . .

"Think about it. Really. Properly. Look beyond the lies and rationalisations and self-deceptions. Like I said, I'll see you soon." Then he turned and walked out of the room.

Left alone, Carth wasn't sure how long he remained paralysed. Subjectively, it seemed an entire age where all he could do was silently seethe.

All through it, he struggled to wake up, but his surroundings remained constant and there was no noticeable transition between states of consciousness. Eventually, he was forced to conclude that he was already awake.

- - -

"They've gone. We're all alone. Marooned forevermore." There was a dry, cynical chuckle. "If we starve to death, I wonder if our ghosts will remain trapped here, haunting this ship for all the aeons of the future?"

Canderous tore his gaze away from the viewport – the endless expanse of black void surrounding the Rakatan flagship, now very noticeably devoid of any other ships. At what point they'd left he wasn't entirely sure. It could have been anytime during the last twelve hours.

His right arm started to come up awkwardly, then stopped in the belated realisation that, below the elbow, it simply wasn't there. He'd heard comrades from the Mandalorian wars talking about missing limbs as phantom presences – of them itching maddeningly, impossible to scratch. As of yet, he hadn't noticed that, but his brain hadn't adjusted at all to the fact that the limb was absent. He kept trying to use it, and being brought up short.

"If you want, I can hurry things along," he said eventually. "Give you the chance to find out without going to all the time and trouble of starving." His voice was quiet, edged in durasteel.

"One-handed, granddad?" Eichor Kreig, the man's name was, and he was dressed in the red armour of an elite Sith trooper, minus the helmet. His face had been handsome once, but the mess of swellings and half-healed lacerations did a very good job of disguising that. "Like to see you try."

There was no pause. Canderous's left hand came up before Eichor had a chance to breathe out, let alone move, grabbing him by the throat and swinging him round, then slamming him back against the viewport hard enough to make his teeth rattle. "Would you now?"

Eichor tried, and conspicuously failed to smirk as Canderous eyeballed him. "Hey, ease up big man. I'm only kidding with ya. Didn't mean anything by it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." There was a faint glimmer of desperation Eichor's dingy-blue eyes.

Canderous headbutted Eichor in the face. The Sith went down like a collapsing sack. "Just to show there's no hard feelings."

Abruptly, he wheeled away, face like a clenched fist, leaving Eichor gulping for air as blood bubbled copiously from a newly opened gash in his forehead. As he walked, he could feel his teeth grinding.

Left to himself, he would have killed Eichor while he still lay unconscious. A simple blaster shot to the back of the head; clean and quick. It wasn't that he had anything much against rank and file Sith troopers, anymore than he had anything personal against the average Republic soldier. Soldiers, by and large, were just that – surprisingly similar, no matter what banner they fought under. And he'd long ago given up taking people trying to kill him personally.

A Mandalorian, though, did not leave an enemy alive behind him where there was even a possibility that he might end up fighting them again. It was ingrained. You removed complications, no questions asked.

Bastila, of course, had had other ideas, for all the fact that she could barely even heal herself. He could have simply ignored her, but he hadn't.

Aside from Eichor and themselves, there were four other survivors. One was another Sith, who'd lost his foot and the lower portion of his leg, and now slipped repeatedly in and out of consciousness, muttering deliriously about the walls watching him. The other three were Republic, although only one of those – Horn – even qualified as walking wounded. Canderous had been involved in enough battlefield triage to know that the other two were as good as dead. It was simply a matter of how long they lasted.

He was heading towards Bastila, he realised after a minute or so. It hadn't been a conscious choice, and that disturbed him slightly. He dealt in matters of being in control.

But his head felt . . . cloudy, thoughts obfuscated, his balance slightly off. Inwardly he acknowledged that he hadn't properly recovered from the loss of his arm, despite both implant and kolto treatment, and what he'd done to Eichor had been at least three-fifths show. If the man had tried to fight back, he could have ended up in serious trouble.

_Frak that._

She'd left word that she didn't want to be disturbed under any circumstances. After about a microsecond's consideration, he decided to frak that too.

As he walked, he quickly found himself becoming short of breath, the minor balance problem blossoming into full-blown dizziness. His teeth ground together so hard he could hear them squeaking.

It was something he'd been noticing more and more. Although he was still just about as physically strong as he'd ever been, he found himself picking up injuries far more regularly. Even with his implant, those injuries took longer and longer to fully heal. Little niggles he'd once have shrugged off in no time at all, now bothered him for days on end, and he couldn't escape the certainty that his reflexes weren't as sharp as they'd been even a year ago. At night, he felt deep-seated aching in his joints that he could no longer pass off as phantoms of his imagination.

Somehow, he'd never expected that he'd have to face old age. It wasn't that he'd imagined himself to be immortal. Just that there'd never been a stage of his life where it was possible to envisage lasting this long.

_Not that you're going to have to worry about it much longer if you keep this up. _He grinned savagely, as much in anger as humour.

It wasn't just the physical that had changed. The physical had changed least of all, in many respects. His gaze dropped involuntary to his missing arm. The bandaged stump of it.

It hadn't even been a conscious choice. Looking back, he knew he could have killed Malefic then. But instead, he'd saved Bastila's life. Purely instinctual. He couldn't even argue with himself about his reasons, because there hadn't been any hint of reason in that moment.

And now there was the stump. A permanent reminder of what he was, and what he wasn't anymore.

A low growl escaped his throat. _Growing soft and senile, as well as decrepit?_

Another door opened automatically in front him, and suddenly he was walking in the vast cathedral-like space of the ship's heart. He sneered at his own unease as he walked through the clinging gloom, footsteps echoing.

Ahead of him, seated cross-legged in a circle of dim light, Bastila looked tiny and insignificant amid the surrounding vastness. Her makeshift crutch lay on the ground beside her, the leg wound she'd received too severe to mend outside of a prolonged healing trance she hadn't yet found time for. She didn't look round at his approach. Her posture reminded him of when she was deep within a Battle Meditation trance.

In front of her, gleaming softly, was the metal cage. The one in which they'd found the Dark Jedi's corpse, resembling a nerf hock that been roasted at too high a temperature – crispy black and cracked on the outside; raw and angry pink within. Patterns of light played around that cage, steadily shifting, and Canderous knew that she must be calling on the Force, for all the fact he couldn't feel it.

He stopped a few paces behind her, on the boundary of the circle of light surrounding her. It came from a hand-lamp resting on the floor next to her. She still didn't give any sign that she was aware of him. The sound of her breathing was soft and rhythmic, similar to someone sleeping. Up close she looked different, her hair cropped down to no more than a couple of inches all over in a rather brutal attempt to tidy it up after its close encounter with Darth Malefic's lightsaber.

After waiting for a while, he fumbled awkwardly at a compartment in his armour with his left hand. Eventually he produced a silver plated cigar case. Opening the case one-handed was another minor struggle, while extracting cigar, clamping it between his teeth, and stowing the case again turned it into something akin to a piece of performance art. Lighting it was a similar ordeal, and he almost gave up halfway through in disgust. Eventually though, he was inhaling deeply, letting out a long, contented sigh as the smoke filled his lungs.

"What do you want?" Bastila's voice still sounded odd, thick and blurred as though he was listening to it through a wall. It was more coherent than earlier, at least. Perhaps, he reflected, annoyance helped overcome pain.

"The pleasure of your company, Princess? No, I don't think even you're gullible enough to fall for that one. Something came up that I thought you needed to know about."

"If it's about the wormhole closing, I already felt it."

That was a new bit of information. He stood watching as she laboriously levered herself upright, not offering to help and taking another long pull on the cigar. "You felt all the other ships leaving too, I presume then?"

She looked round at him sharply. "All of them?"

"Looks that way."

Her expression was flat; closed. Thinking through implications, he decided.

"I'm guessing this means that not only did our red friend survive, he's still near enough to full working order," he added after several seconds had passed. _Despite having a sword driven right through him_. How the hell anyone had managed to shift a couple of hundred capital ships so quickly was something he was avoiding thinking about for the moment. One complication at a time.

"Perhaps," was her terse response. Her eyes were looking in his approximate direction, but he could tell she wasn't really seeing him.

He grunted. "That Sith bastard, Kreig, is worried we might be stranded. Much as I'd take satisfaction from informing him that we are, it would probably qualify as a rather fleeting and pyrrhic pleasure."

She looked at him blankly.

"Okay, since your head injury is obviously still affecting you, I'll rephrase that as a question. You do know how to re-open the wormhole, don't you? It's part of the knowledge the vision well gave you, right?"

There was a pause. "I know how to open it from the _outside_."

Canderous looked at her askance. "And you have reason to think opening it from the inside will be different?"

"Quite frankly, I have no idea."

"Then it's not worth worrying about, is it Princess?" He exhaled a cloud of smoke, drawing a grimace from her.

"So, what's the special occasion this time?" she demanded.

"Hmm?"

"That _thing_. You said you only smoked them on special occasions."

He shrugged. "Look around you. This kind of crap happens to you every day, does it? An occasion doesn't have to be good to be special."

Her eyes narrowed. "That's so utterly idiotic it almost manages to be profound."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

She snorted. "It wasn't one."

"But, you know, I think I'm still going to take it as one anyway."

Bastila let out an exasperated breath, and turned – rather laboriously – away from him again. She seemed to be staring at the metal cage. "The wormhole being closed is the least of our problems."

Canderous waited for her to go on. She didn't. "Well? I'm not a fraking mind reader."

Something else definitely had her attention occupied. Her mind scarcely seemed present in the room with him at all. "If we want to get out of here, we need to get this ship up and running," she said finally.

As a parting gift, Darth Malefic had destroyed their shuttle, and to a larger extent, the entire docking bay that surrounded it.

Canderous grunted. "Bit drastic, don't you think, Princess? Just in case you were forgetting, there are four of us still vaguely capable of crewing this heap. We'd be better off stealing one of its shuttles, surely."

"It won't _let_ us take any of its shuttles. Or its fighters, or its gunboats, or anything else for that matter." There was a sharp, brittle edge to her voice as she spoke. Something that he'd come to know meant she was afraid.

"Won't let us?" he queried.

"It's alive," she said heavily. "That's how Malefic is going to use this fleet. That's how he was able to fly all of the ships out of here so quickly. We don't even need four people to get this ship up and running. We just need one person who's willing to join themselves to it. One person who's strong in the Force." She pointed towards the metal cage.

He digested this slowly. "So," he said eventually. "You want to step into a device whose last occupant ended up looking like an overdone nerfburger, and join yourself to something that you say is alive, and incidentally, somewhere around thirty thousand years old. Is that about the size of it? 'Cos yeah, that sounds entirely sensible to me." He flicked ash from the tip of his cigar.

A visible shudder passed up the length of her spine. "Would you shut up please, Canderous?"

After a time a time, standing there in silence, looking at the cage together, he asked, "You were talking to it, weren't you? The ship I mean."

She nodded, so abrupt it was almost invisible.

"It say how the poor bastard ended up in that state?"

One of those areas he was supposed to shut up about, he sensed immediately. _Tough_.

Another shudder passed through her. "He tried to disconnect. Break the link."

His mouth twisted. "So the ship charbroiled him? Bit on the drastic side, don't you think? Being stuck out here for 30,000 years is going to have an effect on your sanity I'm sure – you'd get slightly lonely I'd imagine – but a bit drastic all the same."

She sighed. "The ship didn't do it. Not deliberately, at least."

"As accidents go it's a pretty damned impressive one." He was unwilling to let it drop, no matter how much she wanted him to.

Her hesitation was obvious. "If a person joins with the ship, it's . . . permanent. From what I've been able to gather, person and ship become, effectively, a single entity fused together by the Force. They can no more separate from each other again, than a person can . . ."

"Shed a limb?" he suggested dryly.

"Shed your consciousness. Your entire being," she corrected.

"Well, that just about settles it then." His response was cheerfully grim. "We go and steal that shuttle, like I said earlier."

Bastila looked round at him again. There was a mixture of fear and frustration in her eyes. "It won't bloody let us, damn it! Weren't you listening to what I said earlier?"

"Where, exactly, did I propose asking for permission? Besides, I may not have Revan's way with other people, but when I set my mind to something I think you'll find I can be pretty damned persuasive."

- - -

"You can stop pretending to be unconscious if you like. I'm sure it must be getting slightly wearing by now."

There was no response. Tamar hadn't, in all honesty, expected that there would be one.

The man's name, according the ID scrip he'd been carrying, was Arathor Dann. After removing his breath mask, Tamar had discovered that – just like the escaped sniper – he was a Miraluka.

The Miraluka were a near-human, inherently Force-sensitive race who'd migrated to the world of Alphredies in the Abron system thousands of years in the past. The sun of the Abron system was a murky red-dwarf, the scant light it gave off primarily in the infra-red end of the spectrum, and gradually, the Miraluka had lost the ability process visible light, simultaneously evolving the ability to see via the Force in compensation.

Right now, he lay strapped securely to a couch in front of Tamar, a disruptor collar – currently switched off – around his throat. The cell they both occupied was located in one of the more dismal sections of the _Rancorous's_ vast belly.

"My apologies if your jaw's starting to hurt," Tamar continued after a short while. "That'll be the painkillers wearing off. Did you know that a couple of your molars had been hollowed out? Someone had filled them with a fast-acting neurotoxin." He made a tutting noise. "Very dangerous. You could have had an extremely nasty accident. Not to worry though. All taken care of now. My dentistry skills are a little crude, unfortunately, but I'm sure they'll improve with practice." A pause. "You don't have to thank me."

Again, no response.

"When I say you don't have to thank me . . ."

"You're Revan." Arathor's voice was dry; cracked. He hadn't moved, and with no obvious outward change – like opening eyes, for instance – it was slightly startling.

Tamar nodded. "That's right. Out of interest, were you expecting me on Nawathwai, or was your decision to have me killed just a spur of the moment type of thing?"

Arathor started to chuckle, but it degenerated rapidly into strangled coughing. "If we'd been expecting the great and terrible Darth Revan, don't you think we would have come a little better prepared than we did?" he eventually managed.

"Maybe you just have a lot of confidence in your own abilities?"

The only answer was silence.

"So Hulas then. What has our fine and upstanding Rodian friend gone and done to get himself targeted for assassination?"

"I just do my job. I don't speculate. I don't ask questions." He sounded contemptuous. "I thought you'd know how these things work. I didn't think you, of all people, would be so naïve."

Tamar simply smiled. "Naivety can have a certain charm, don't you think? So tell me, is this all some kind of petty little Genoharadan internal squabble I've blundered into?"

"Genoharadan?" The Miraluka snorted after a noticeable pause. "You might enjoy fairytales, Revan. I do not."

The smile broadened as he continued to stare at Arathor. A denial, but a denial phrased in such a way that he was meant to take it as an implicit admission, and be sidetracked down a dead-end alley of questioning. "No? Sometimes I _do_ find them quite . . . amusing. How is Morrigance, by the way?"

The complete lack of reaction was telling. For all the previous questions, there had been tiny flickers – nothing that he could read meaning from, just the near-undetectable stirring of the Miraluka's brain as it processed information. Here though, there was absolutely nothing. Not even the most miniscule response. Which meant something was being deliberately hidden – deliberately shielded from view.

"I already told you. I am not part of some phantom cabal that exists only in the fever dreams of conspiracy theorists. I'm just a man doing a job."

Tamar sat back; contemplative. When he spoke again, his voice was arctic cold. "There are many different ways we can approach this, Arathor. We'll stick with Arathor, shall we? Or is there something else you might prefer?" The near imperceptible flicker of the man's thoughts at the edges of his straining Force sense was back. "No? So shall we have this nice, pleasant conversation, or shall we try something different?"

Arathor just snorted contemptuously. "I don't know how much you know about a Miraluka's sight, Revan. But I can tell you now, just from looking at you. You won't torture me. You don't have it in you, whatever you once were."

"Who said anything about torture?" Tamar inquired calmly. "Idiotic interrogatory technique, really, don't you think? Unless your only goal is to get a person to tell you the lies you want to hear."

"Then what are we talking about, exactly, Revan? Maybe I'm just too slow to keep up with your _towering_ intellect."

"I thought we were discussing the health of a mutual friend."

Silence. Again, Tamar could sense absolutely nothing from Arathor.

_So be it then_.

Inwardly, he steadied himself, locating a calm, almost icy place where no emotion dwelt. So easy, to use a _particular_ interpretation of the Jedi Code and do such terrible things. So easy now to see the way it might have started out, and so easy to repeat it. He steeled himself – emptied his thoughts of doubt.

With luck, Arathor would be able to see the transition in him. That might make it easier. Although, as Arathor had implied, his knowledge of a Miraluka's Force sight – its scope and limitations – was imperfect, to say the least.

This time he probed more insistently at the Miraluka's mind, pushing at the hard, glassy wall of his mental defences until the recipient couldn't fail to notice. He saw Arathor flinch just fractionally as he tightened his grip even further, pressing relentlessly.

_So easy, if you didn't let yourself feel_. "I'm told that the Force can do terrible things to a person's mind." Tamar's voice was conversational.

Arathor had started to sweat now, though his mental defences remained solid. Tamar continued to press, ramping up the pressure inexorably. It had to be convincing. That was what he told himself.

"So they say." The Miraluka's voice came out as a croak.

Much harder and the defences would shatter. He could feel them stretching towards their limits, no match for his strength. Strength he usually preferred not to acknowledge.

And then, taking him completely unawares, something stirred from deep in the recesses of Tamar's mind – the same broken, disconnected and fragmentary places where he kept his knowledge of battle-tactics and the intricacies of Mandalorian culture. It was . . . recognition. The taste of familiarity.

Those mental defences might shatter and fragment, but they would take the rest of the Miraluka's mind with them. He could see that suddenly with perfect clarity. He could see other things too.

Tamar struggled hard to keep the surprise from showing – from shining forth to the Miraluka's Force sight. How successful he was, he had no idea.

His communicator chose that moment to beep. With an exhalation, relief as much as anything, he released his grip on Arathor's consciousness, and opened the comm. link, listening to what was being said.

After a moment, he frowned. In the background, he could hear Arathor panting raggedly.

From somewhere in the distance there was a low rumbling noise, transmitting itself through the _Rancorous's_ hull and making the cell walls vibrate.

An explosion.

Tamar cut the communication link abruptly and stood up, expression grim. He strode rapidly from the cell.

- - -

The modified fighter made the leap to hyperspace, leaving the Living Fleet behind it, cutting silently through space – a vast and unstoppable school of firaxa sharks moving unstoppably towards a feeding ground.

Morrigance would not, in ordinary circumstances, have chosen to part from the fleet so soon, but the message that had arrived had been of a nature that it was impossible to ignore. Events on Coruscant demanded her attention, and they demanded that attention now.

She told herself that her control was not a factor of distance, and that she had never planned to take the role of fleet commander. That had never been where her talents lay. Nevertheless, a lingering spectre of disquiet remained at the timing.

She reminded herself that, while she had planned for other tests, the Republic expeditionary force had been dispatched handily enough, with no major damage sustained. The fleet itself answered her command with alacrity – after devouring the offering she had presented to it in the form of Darth Malefic and the Crown of Drochmar, it was not in a position to do otherwise. And Admiral Bortha had already proved himself an able enough war leader and tactician, for all the fear that lived within him. He was perfectly competent to act as her surrogate as the next stage was brought into play.

Technically speaking.

Behind her featureless mirror mask, her teeth clenched, fixed in their grisly perma-grin. The level of her disquiet did not diminish.

It was a little like being a juggler, working at the very limits of her skill, with half a dozen different balls spinning constantly through the air. As soon as she dealt with one ball, her focus must transfer immediately on to the next, all the while keeping the overriding pattern firmly in mind.

_A juggler in the theatre of the absurd_.

After a slight pause, she leant forward and activated a console. The hyperspace journey would be a lengthy one, and she might as well use the time constructively. A list of submitted intelligence reports appeared, bright in the cockpit's gloom. She pulled up the first of them and began to read.

_Korda Drace has, as anticipated, moved rapidly to assume control of Darth Auza's assets. The methods he has chosen to employ owe little to subtlety. On Ziost . . ._

- - -

Bodies littered the Grand Terrace, the air filled with smoke and the sound of blaster fire. Between broad, towering stone pillars, Ziost's sky was a mass of lividly bruised cloud, rain falling in a drumming deluge.

A double file of elite Sith troopers advanced steadily, laying down a constant wall of blaster fire. Behind them came a cadre of half a dozen Dark Jedi, robed in grey and black, and at the centre of their ranks, a figure armoured all in black, ribbed and glittering. A red-bladed lightsaber glowed in one hand, the other wearing an armoured gauntlet so outsized as to appear almost comical. Beneath a polished metal skullcap, Drace's face was as livid as the clouds, the tattoos beneath his eyes almost seeming to shine, his copper-red beard garishly bright.

The Sith forces came to a halt before a flight of steps, leading up to a pair of immense metal doors. The troopers spread out in disciplined formation, Drace advancing through their number. At the foot of the steps he stopped, staring intently upwards.

After a moment, he lifted his gauntleted fist – pointed at the doors. There was a thin, high whining note, the air around the gauntlet suddenly crackling as a charge built up. That charge was unleashed abruptly – a dazzling flash that gave a fleeting impression of multiple tongues of red lightning, bright enough to perma-etch itself into an observer's retinas. The metal doors exploded inwards with a deafening clang.

A moment later Drace's Sith rushed in, more blaster fire greeting their advance.

- - -

_Drace, however, does not stand unopposed. Jurriance, the Keeper, has also taken the bait dangled in front of him, and vies openly to assume Auza's vacated throne . . ._

- - -

The silver levitation disk rose into view from the shadow of the altar, surrounded by translucent violet shields. Seated cross-legged in the centre of the disk, cradled by those protective barriers, was a man, robed in immaculate white. A ragged mane of hair the colour of bleached bone stood on end, floating in a strange corona around his head. Eyes as pale as Arkanian ice glared out from a deeply creased face that somehow managed not to appear old.

The man's arms outstretched, a smile spreading across bloodless lips as blaster fire flickered and dispersed off the shields surrounding him. Force lightning sprang from his hands in raging storms, strobing repeatedly, until the air itself seemed to become alive with it.

When the lightning finally faded again, the entire centre of the temple was a mess of the dead and dying, the reek of charred flesh so strong it was a near physical presence. Jurriance and the levitation disk floated imperiously forward, untouched above the carnage.

There was movement off to one side. Jurriance's gaze snapped round.

Drace stepped out from between two pillars. Before Jurriance could react, red energy exploded from Drace's clenched fist, slamming into the levitation disk and sending it careening wildly across the chamber.

Jurriance howled, incoherent rage. The rows of statues lining the temple's upper galleries suddenly began to glow with cold blue light.

A moment later pale Sith ghosts leapt forth, shrieking like demented banshees as they descended on Drace and the other Dark Jedi who had violated their sanctuary.

- - -

_Other parties have taken a more circumspect approach, watching the contest between Drace and Jurriance with interest, waiting for an opportunity to take advantage . . ._

- - -

The masked sniper watched the events playing out on the Grand Terrace from a hilltop more than a mile distant. An extended rifle with a telescopic scope trained a targeting laser onto a particular spot of ground as rain continued to pour down in thick sheets.

Once the sniper was happy that this spot really was the optimum one to generate the required effect, they pulled a secondary trigger, broadcasting the fact to a Sith dreadnaught that sat waiting in orbit.

It took about three seconds for there to be any response. Then a cataclysmically intense pillar of energy flashed down from the heavens, targeting the exact spot that the sniper had 'painted' with the laser.

At first, everything happened in a strange, almost stately silence. The ground around the impact zone rippled as if suddenly transformed to liquid. A moment later, a vast shockwave of superheated air rolled out in every direction. The towering pillars blew apart like matchsticks, the entire face of the terrace collapsing a fraction afterwards in a vast, slow motion landslide. Clouds of dust rose up, hundreds of metres into the air, the falling rain boiling away in thick columns of steam.

Only then, finally, did the sound arrive. Sensors in the sniper's helmet cut in to protect their hearing from a racket like the thunder from a thousand, thousand simultaneous lightning strikes.

After it had passed, the sniper calmly began to disassemble their rifle, then climbed onto a swoop bike and sped away.

- - -

_Darth Malefic's continued absence from Sith space is also starting to cause questions. Free of the direct yoke of their master's influence, those who pledged allegiance to him are now manoeuvring with increasing vigour. Cardula Drin has gone as far as to declare herself Malefic's chosen proxy, and moves to assassinate those she sees as rivals in the name of loyalty to her Dark Lord . . . _

- - -

Their mouths separated, the kiss breaking. Cardula's darkly gleaming red lips curved in a knowing smile, a sharp red-nailed fingertip trailing teasingly across the sculpted musculature of Morn Jereth's exposed chest. Then she turned away, snatching up a dark red robe and pulling it on over pale flesh drawn with swirls of delicate Sith tattoos. Coils of elegantly disarrayed brassy-blonde hair bounced around her shoulders.

Jereth remained standing fixedly in place, half-naked and completely motionless. After a couple of seconds, his face twisted and darkened in a scowl of rage. "Cardula! What have you done to me, you witch?"

She didn't look round and kept on walking, letting loose a dark and smoky laugh. "Done to you, Jereth, my dear? Only what you intended to do to me, as soon as you'd earned yourself another notch in your bedpost."

"Cardula!"

From behind Jereth came a soft splashing sound – something big, which up to now had remained hidden from his Force sense, slipping smoothly into the pool of stagnant, lily-covered water. Through the transparisteel roof panels of the arboretum, steaming jungle could be seen, spreading out in every direction as far as the eye could see.

A narrow, toothsome head emerged from the pool. And another. Four of them in total. Hssiss. Dark side dragons, as they were sometimes grandiosely referred to. They looked more like three-metre long crocodiles, wearing elaborate spine-covered fancy dress.

Sweat trickled down Jereth's almost unnaturally handsome face. Still he couldn't so much as twitch below the neck. "Damn it, Cardula! You've made your point. We can make a deal. An alliance . . ."

The four Hssiss emerged from the pool, water dripping from dark, scaly hide. Cardula had almost reached the exit now. One of the Hssiss brushed against Jereth's leg.

She heard his scream of terror as he realised what it was that had rubbed up against him, and what was about to happen. A pair of doors slid shut between them, muffling the sound as terror became something else, and the scream lost all coherence.

- - -

_Those rivals, of course, are not standing idly by, seeking to elevate their own positions by whatever means is available to them. Again, for the moment, all is done in the name of their Dark Lord . . ._

- - -

The jungle floor shook, ripples spreading out across the surface of a muddy pool. A roost of brightly coloured birds exploded from the treetops, cawing raucously and scattering across the cloudy evening sky.

Multiple sets of titanic, pounding footsteps came ever closer to the sheltered clearing and the ornate palace of mirror-polished plasteel and crystal that sat in the middle of it. The sound of undergrowth being crushed and torn up – of entire trees being splintered and knocked aside – grew ever closer. Automated gun turrets whirred into life as their perimeter was breached, laying down a heavy barrage of high-grade blaster fire. One by one, these turrets died, smashed to fragments by the unseen foe.

Finally, emerging from the jungle, eight towering metal figures hove into view. They had started out as demolition droids, each one standing over twenty metres tall. At some point, someone had converted them into enormous walking battle platforms.

Without pausing, they stepped forward and began to tear their way through the palace walls.

- - -

Morrigance looked up briefly from the report, staring out of the fighter's cockpit and into hyperspace. Some things at least, by their very nature, could be counted on to progress oh so predictably to plan.

- - -

Carth groped at the side of his neck, his fingers clumsy as they struggled to grip onto the tiny dart that protruded from his flesh. He was lying on his back. He assumed he was on his back, because he could see the ceiling. Hmm, ceilings didn't, in his experience, tend to sway like that.

Yolanda's voice came from what sounded like miles away. ". . . I assure you Ensign. I have the situation entirely under control . . ."

The ensign said something that was drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in Carth's ears. He finally managed to get blunt fingernails to grip into the dart's surface and managed to prise it free, even as the feeling started to absent itself from his extremities. His eyelids suddenly felt as if they had lead weights attached.

". . . I'm his nurse."

_His nurse?_ Carth's thoughts, and the ensign's words, meshed surreally into one. It jolted him back, temporarily at least, from the yawning abyss of unconsciousness that sought to claim him.

". . . en route for a private clinic at Kamari . . ." Yolanda's words faded out in a mass of strange swooshing noises.

". . . not an ambulance service!" The ensign sounded indignant. Carth thought that he might be smiling, though not for any good reason. _You tell her_.

". . . harmless. He just suffers from delusionary episodes now and again . . ."

The ensign said something sharp that again yanked Carth back as he slid towards the edge of unconsciousness. In it was the word, _Sith_.

"Yes, his delusions are about Sith." There was a weary sigh. "They always have been, for the past twenty years or so, I'm told. The fact remains, in all that time, he has never once been violent or dangerous to . . ."

It took Carth a moment or two to process the fact that he was the person they were both talking about here. _Hey, wait a bloody minute . . ._ He struggled to make himself move; to make a noise to attract their attention, but nothing was working or responding.

". . . still should have informed us in advance. We could have taken steps . . ."

"Do you have any idea who his father is?" Yolanda's voice was suddenly sharp. The name she mentioned meant nothing at all to Carth. ". . . the noted Fondorian industrialist? No? Well, he's kind of touchy about details of his son and sole heir's mental health getting out. Touchy enough to set bounty hunters after anyone who lets that kind of information get into the public domain, if you catch my drift . . ."

Her voice seemed to be dwindling, coming from further and further away. He couldn't see the ceiling anymore either, darkness clouding the edges of his vision. _Bliss. The Catcher_ . . . The thought left him suddenly afraid, making him shy back from the clutching blackness.

"No I wasn't threatening you, ensign. I was simply stating . . ."

Barely audible at all now.

". . . yes, everything is perfectly under control now, thank you." A pause, Carth's ears full of strange distorting sounds. ". . . and yes, I assure you that no other passengers will be disturbed. He won't be allowed out of this cabin again until we arrive at Kamari . . ." Yolanda was still speaking, Carth could tell, but the words just weren't getting through to his brain.

He was aware of the doors closing. Then nothing.

There was a slight stinging sensation in the side of Carth's neck, followed by something cold enough to make him gasp convulsively flowing just beneath his skin. He blinked slowly, everything swimming and blurring in front of his eyes. A woman with collar-length blonde hair and eyes that were too green to be altogether natural was kneeling over him on the bed, holding a hypospray.

It took him several seconds to recognise Yolanda, different again from the last time he remembered seeing her. Every time different. She might almost be a shapeshifter, he mused. She was scowling heavily.

"What the hell do you think you're playing at, Valden? Have you taken total leave of your senses?"

All he could manage immediately was to blink stupidly a couple of times. He tried to speak, but his mouth just opened and produced a wordless exhalation.

"Did you get your espionage training from a Gamorrean correspondence course? 'Be good spy in one-two-lots easy steps'?"

Everything came back in a startling rush, the lethargy dropping away from him in a skittery confusion of near-panicked turmoil. Whatever had been in that hypospray certainly packed quite a kick. Carth's gaze settled on the tranq gun resting on the bed and his expression tightened abruptly. He moved quickly, grabbing hold of Yolanda and rolling her over onto her back before she could react, holding her wrists pinned above her head so she couldn't reach the gun again. There was a painful twinge from his bandaged side as he did so, his breathing coming heavily. He could still taste the Catcher's presence lingering in the room.

"What was I thinking?" It came out raw and harsh, quietly furious. "You're the one who booked passage on a luxury passenger liner. When we've got a damned Sith assassin on our heels." The conversation with the Catcher was playing over in his head. _The conversation with Bliss_ . . .

For a moment, she struggled to break his grip, but Carth had purposefully trapped both her legs with his body, preventing her getting any leverage.

"So?" She stopped struggling, glaring daggers at him. "It was the best choice available with the notice I had. Do you think it was easy lugging your unconscious carcass around with me?"

The last thing Carth remembered before waking up on this bed, with the Catcher for company, was paying a visit to a 'trusted' contact of Yolanda's in order to arrange for passage off Fondor. Unfortunately, Carth seemed to have stirred up the local exchange cell with his treatment of their Verpine ally, and they'd been laying in wait for them there. A firefight had ensued. He'd taken a blaster shot the side at some point, and the rest was nothing more than an incoherent jumble of images.

He frowned. "You shot me in the neck." He could feel the spot where the dart had hit him, itching.

Yolanda looked up at him, calm now. "With a tranquiliser. To stop you getting us both thrown in the bloody brig, with all your babbling about the Sith being after us and having to turn the ship around."

Carth started to retort angrily again, but caught himself. He stared down at her, suddenly highly self-conscious about their respective positions. The fact he was holding her down on the bed with her wrists pinned above her head.

She seemed to read the discomfiture in his expression, and twisted in a way that wasn't _quite_ an escape attempt. Her face lifted, whispering close to his ear. "Like it rough then, do you Valden?" Then she licked the side of his neck and made a noise that was disturbingly like a cat purring.

He let go of her and pushed away, moving across to the far side of the cabin with a haste that was almost unseemly. As Yolanda sat up, rubbing at the white marks his grip had left around her wrists, he ran a hand distractedly through his hair. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to . . ." he trailed off with a shake of his head.

"Don't worry about it." Her tone was neutral. She was looking at him critically. "You know, Valden, if you're going to dye your hair like that, you should think about getting your facial hair electrolysised. That stubble's a dead giveaway."

Carth didn't say anything to that. He wasn't even looking directly at her anymore. He was staring off into the corner of the room where Bliss had appeared. "The Catcher's found us again," he said at length, almost absently. "He's going to be laying in wait for us as soon as we make our next stopover."

"That's not possible." Yolanda was frowning.

"No?" Carth met her gaze fixedly. "He came to me earlier, in my . . ." He was going to say sleep, but caught himself. He still wasn't sure if he'd been awake during that or not.

"So?" She stood up. "You were kept fully sedated. You don't know where we're going. You don't know where we are. Even if your pet bogeyman did pay a visit, you couldn't have given anything crucial away. _Because you didn't know anything_."

Carth picked up the same towel the Catcher had earlier on, and slung it at her. "Look at the logo in the corner."

She did. "The _Sunrider_," she read. Then, "He saw this?"

"Saw it. Read it out loud. Took great delight in telling me what it meant."

Yolanda swore. She started pacing

"We have to get this ship stopped and on a different heading. Because you know he's not going to settle for just killing the pair of us when he catches up to us." There was no response, so he added: "So you see, my 'babbling about Sith' to the ship's crew wasn't completely without purpose."

"No. Just incompetently done," she muttered.

Carth shot her a sour look.

Yolanda swore again, her pacing picking up momentum. "Okay, so I really screwed up good there, didn't I? There's not a chance anyone's going to believe a word we say after the line of nerf-crap I've just finished pedalling."

He stared at her. Suspicions were suddenly blossoming, unbid, as he managed to make his thoughts move temporarily past his nighttime visitation. "Why didn't you just dump me on Fondor when you had the chance? You were looking to get away from me at the first opportunity. What changed that?"

Her expression turned flinty. "Let me get this straight. You'd have preferred me to have left you for Torval Heida and his mob?"

"No, I'm not saying that." Inwardly Carth cursed himself for not knowing when to keep his big mouth shut. He started to apologise, when something else clicked inside his head. "Wait. That conversation I overheard between you and your handler. You were given an order, and one you weren't too damn pleased about. You were ordered to stick with me, weren't you? Find out all you can. Don't let me out of your sight. That sort of thing."

"Force, you're an ass sometimes."

"I . . ."

Yolanda didn't let him get any further. "If this was back on . . ." she started, before clamming up tight almost immediately.

"Emberlene?" Carth offered.

The look in her eyes was enough to make him flinch. "If this was back on _Emberlene_," she bit out, "And if I still believed in any of the nerf-brained idiocy they like to peddle there, I'd be forced to kill you for that kind of slight to my honour."

Carth blinked, taken aback. "Look, I'm sorry if I've . . ."

"You saved my life on Berchest. You didn't abandon me. That placed me in your debt. And whatever you may think of me, _that_ is something I take very seriously."

"Now wait just a minute. There's no kind of debt. Anyone else would have done the same."

Her lips twisted. "But you can't manage to apply that same logic back to me. I can't be repaying a debt I accrued. I can't be doing what 'anyone else' would have done in the circumstances. You can be pure and good in your motives, but no one else can. Is that the way it is?"

Carth swallowed – let out a breath. "I really am sorry. That wasn't what I meant. And . . . thank you for saving my life. I just . . ." He stopped himself, realising that foot and mouth were in strong danger of intersecting again. He really couldn't think straight at the moment. The Catcher kept drifting back. "Let's just leave it at thank you."

Yolanda's expression smoothed over near instantly. A tiny smile touched her lips. "So that's settled. Now. The Catcher then. Would you like to come and help sabotage a ship with me? I think we've got about three hours."

After a pause, Carth nodded, slightly hesitant. Part of him couldn't help but wonder if he'd just been conned somehow. Mostly, though, he was too distracted to care.

- - -

The bulkhead doors slammed shut, cutting off the storm of blaster fire. Canderous fell back against the wall, his breath coming raggedly. His personal shields had been torn to shreds, his heavy armour scorched black to go with the gouges Darth Malefic's lightsaber had inflicted. Sweat poured down his face, which was now somewhat light in the eyebrow department.

His gaze met Bastila's, who looked on wordlessly, her face pale and taut.

"Okay, so maybe it's not going to let us take a shuttle," he conceded between ragged pants. "Not _easily_."

Bastila just snorted, turned her back on him, and started to lurch away, ungainly but with a surprising turn of speed.

"I never should have let you distract me." She sounded quietly furious. "I've known all along exactly what I needed to do."

Pushing away from the wall, he forced himself to follow her. "Yeah? Mind explaining it me then? Us old Mandalorians can be a bit slow sometimes. It's all the war wounds, probably."

There was another louder snort. "Why didn't you kill Darth Malefic?" The cold edge of anger in her words took him by surprise with its sheer intensity.

It was several seconds before he replied. "Short answer, Princess? Because the bastard kicked my arse. Painful as it is to admit . . ."

"You know very well what I mean."

He shrugged. But he did indeed know exactly what she meant. He just didn't have any good answer, for either himself or for her. "Split second reaction. There wasn't any conscious decision involved." It was far easier if that was true. The problem was, it was sounding less and less true every time he said it to himself. "Next time I'll be sure to bear it in mind. Let the Sith Lord take your head off."

"What happened to the man who won the battle of Althir so ruthlessly? See an opening and take it. Isn't that the Mandalorian way? We needed that man against Malefic."

Canderous's grimace was uncomfortable. The coldness of her words needled him in ways he hadn't thought that she, of all people, could needle him. "People change. You Jedi believe that, right? You wouldn't spout that tedious 'no one is beyond redemption' crap otherwise. Blame Revan if you want someone to blame it on."

_Yeah, right._ He sneered inwardly.

"Revan would have killed the Sith Lord. No questions asked. _Tamar_ would have done what you did."

"There's a difference, is there? Thought they were the same person."

"You know there's a difference."

Canderous shrugged again. "Okay then," he conceded with a grimace. "Blame _Tamar_ for turning me into a weakling. Or blame yourself maybe. Whatever."

He heard the air whistling between her teeth. "Sometimes maybe we _do_ need the Revans and the Mandalorians. Do you have any _idea _what this might cost the rest of the galaxy?"

"No, I don't." His voice was flat – steely. "And here's the thing. Neither do you. Malefic's being manipulated by someone else. We both know that. There's no telling that his death would have made any positive difference. And who's to say your Battle Meditation won't prove more beneficial to the rest of the galaxy, long term, than his death."

She laughed, the sound dark and edged in bitterness. "My Battle Meditation."

"Or even just you, Princess. What do you want? Blood?" Canderous felt his patience slip. "Look, you're alive. We have a list of fraking problems as long as . . . as long as _your_ arm. So that's basically exactly the same as every other bloody day since forever. Stop complaining and get on with it."

"That's _exactly_ what I'm doing."

With that, silence fell, except for the uneven dragging sound her limping footsteps made beside him.

"You still haven't told me what it is you intend to do. That is what I asked, before you bit my head off." Except of course, she had told him. Well enough that he knew the answer anyway.

"Before I bit your head off?" It was accompanied by a strangled laugh. In the brief sidelong glance she cast his way, her eyes looked positively haunted.

"I'm waiting," he pressed, as she still didn't say anything. Something about her right now was making him feel deeply uneasy on levels that he couldn't quite put into cogent thought.

She made a soft, unfathomable noise. "We don't just have to escape here. We have to stop the fleet too. Malefic's crown. The carnage he could inflict . . ."

"I was there. You don't need to explain it."

Bastila continued as if she hadn't heard. "This is the flagship. The strongest ship in the fleet. The strongest _will_, and the one that's meant to lead. I could feel its anger at being left behind."

Canderous just grunted. But he knew where this was going.

"With my Battle Meditation . . ." Something that was partly a laugh, but mainly something else. "Those words again. Perhaps, in the end, that's all I am meant to be?" A headshake, obviously annoyed with herself. "Maybe, just maybe, with that, I'll have the strength that's needed. If not the strength to take the fleet back from his control entirely, then perhaps enough to cripple it. To stop him using the fleet effectively for long enough that it can be defeated."

"You're going to join yourself to it, aren't you? Same way as that side of roasted meat."

She nodded once, emphatic. Outwardly emphatic. "I have to."

He opened his mouth then closed it again. "It scares you, doesn't it?" It wasn't remotely what he wanted to say, but it was what came out.

"Fear is an illusion," she murmured beneath her breath.

"I not asking some fraking Jedi," he snapped. "I'm asking you."

"It terrifies me," she answered finally, the words scarcely audible.

- - -

From somewhere close by came the sound of an explosion, accompanied by a sharp cry that cut off abruptly. The lights in the cell went out, the pervasive electric humming much more noticeable now for its complete absence. There was a burst of blaster fire, muffled through the walls, followed by garbled shouting, then running footsteps and finally silence, broken intermittently by the sound of something sparking.

Arathor Dann redoubled the flow of Force to his bonds, suspecting for the first time that there really was no one paying attention to him. That this wasn't all some kind of elaborate ruse meant to raise his hopes then shatter them, which had been his lingering suspicion ever since Revan had exited so hastily without even bothering to turn the disrupter collar on.

There were more running footsteps. Another explosion. Frag grenade in an enclosed space, he recognised from the familiar and distinctive sound. These noises were much further away though, and the only reason he could hear them with such clarity was because of the Force flowing through him, enhancing the acuity of his senses.

The first of the straps, holding him around the upper torso finally sprung loose. To begin with, he'd tried simply to enhance his strength and burst his way free of the restraints by brute force. That effort had failed abysmally though, leaving him with this slower and more painstaking method of getting loose.

Now that the first strap was gone, it became much easier. A minute or so of frantic wriggling and twisting and squirming allowed him to get an arm free. From that point onwards, it was simple.

Once on his feet, he unfastened the lifeless disrupter collar from around his neck and slung it into the corner. That left him with the cell door to deal with. It wobbled back and forth in the frame as he tried it, suggesting that it normally relied on a power lock to hold it secure. Even with that power supply gone though, it still put up a stubborn amount of resistance.

Eventually, Arathor was forced to give in and draw upon the Force again, acutely aware that if either Revan, or either of the other two extremely strong Force users he'd sensed on board, weren't fully distracted, he was running a big risk of giving himself away.

Metal gave way abruptly with an alarmingly loud shrieking wail, just before the flesh of his hands started to tear from the strain. The door slid back.

For a moment, he simply stood in place, listening intently. The entire cellblock seemed to be in utter darkness, so it wasn't just his own cell that had had the power cut off. Darkness to a Miraluka though, was not a handicap. He didn't require anything so mundane as light to see by.

Abruptly, he started forward.

He made it as far as the control station at the end of the cellblock without incident. The sounds of blaster fire and explosions were becoming more distant and less frequent, which meant he probably had to move fast to make the opportunity he'd been presented with count.

The control station was unlocked, and from the look of things, it had been the scene of an intense firefight. Consoles had been blasted apart and vast swathes of the walls were badly charred, indicating either a plasma grenade or a thermal detonator. There were a number of broken droid parts scattered across the floor, but no sign of bodies.

Arathor's attention alighted on a terminal. It was still on, its screen flickering and halfway obscured by some kind of liquid spilled across it. Blood, he noted grimly as his fingertips trailed through it.

Excitement suddenly flared, quickly strangled back into disciplined urgency. Not only was it still switched on, it was logged on. And there was a data card in it.

Working rapidly, he managed to call up schematics for the ship, locate the quickest route to one of its landing bays, and download it onto the card. At that moment, footsteps started pounding rapidly along the corridor outside.

Arathor tensed, flattening himself against the wall. But the footsteps went straight past the control station without pausing. Through the wall he had the impression of around a dozen glowing grey figures, moving fast, filled with a sense of near frantic urgency. Their voices echoed weirdly to his Force-enhanced hearing.

As soon as they were gone, he made a move to grab the data card and get out of there. He noticed some of the other options that the terminal menu was presenting him with though, and hesitated. Suddenly his heart was thudding again for very different reasons.

Not only was the terminal logged on, it was logged on with high-level access rights. Communication logs . . . Navigation logs and route plans . . .. As they flicked across his mind 's eye, he digested the details rapidly.

This was too good an opportunity to waste.

- - -

"So, what's Emberlene like then?"

Yolanda looked at Carth sidelong, her expression sour. "Why?"

They were standing in a reception area of one the upper rings of Kamari station. Everything around them was bright and clean and minimalistically elegant – all immaculate white tiles and transparisteel walls, running water flowing between them, so you were left with the impression that you should be able to see straight through them, while not actually being able to. The sound the running water made – just loud and pervasive enough to discourage casual eavesdropping, while not impeding conversation – was oddly soothing.

Carth shrugged. "No particular reason. I'm just trying to make conversation." Distracting himself from his inner thoughts. Thoughts of Bliss and the Catcher, and all that the Catcher had told him.

"Well don't." The reply was short and snappish.

Kamari station was one of the most renowned medical research facilities in the Republic, home to numerous clinics dedicated to providing advanced and specialist treatments of virtually any condition it was possible to name. Permanent home to more than eight million people, and the prestigious Kamari University of Medicine, it was like a miniature world in its own right, orbiting a distant blue-white sun.

And if you wanted to find somewhere where you had the best chance of identifying, say, a peculiarly advanced chemical formula, as well as gain access to the most complete genetic database in the known galaxy, this was the place to head.

"Fine." Carth let out a breath, glanced around uncomfortably for about the twelfth time in the past ten minutes, and tried to stop himself feeling so damn jittery.

His gaze lingered briefly on a screen that was playing a holoNet news feed with the sound turned low. It seemed to be about some scandal involving a Coruscant senator and a famous actress though, so he moved quickly on. That the rest of the Republic could be caught up in such . . . _trivialities_ amazed him.

It had been getting on for twelve hours since they'd parted with the _Sunrider_. That had gone almost _too_ smoothly for Carth's liking. When things went exactly according to plan, with no sniff of a hitch in sight, he always found himself looking nervously over his shoulder until the inevitable sting in the tail caught up with him.

It was rare indeed that he found himself disappointed.

Yolanda had simply walked into a restricted crew area with all of the self-confidence of someone who owned the entire luxury liner. There she'd gone completely unchallenged as she'd hacked a computer terminal, spoofing sensor feeds to simulate a serious problem in the hyperdrive core, before stealing the access codes for the emergency hyperspace yacht that shipping regulations stated all passenger vessels above a certain size and complement must carry.

As soon as the _Sunrider_ ditched back to sub-light, they'd taken the yacht – again unchallenged – and made it clear.

Assuming that the _Sunrider's_ crew stuck to standard regulations – and for a vessel as prestigious as the _Sunrider_ they almost certainly wouldn't even think of violating them – the liner would be forced to put in at the nearest starport, and get the fault that had forced it out of hyperspace thoroughly checked out. Whatever kind of ambush the Catcher had waiting would sit unsprung.

That was the theory at least. And theory and reality were meshing quite well thus far. If only he could believe it.

Yolanda spoke without warning, making him jolt. "Emberlene is one of the most beautiful places in the galaxy. I left there when I was twelve years old, and I've never been back. I never will go back there alive, under any circumstances."

The quiet venom in her tone left Carth temporarily taken aback. "I er . . . didn't mean to raise a sensitive subject."

"Of course you didn't."

He decided very quickly on silence as the best policy. Starting an argument and drawing the attention of everyone in the reception area came very low on the list of possible good moves right now.

She surprised him by continuing anyway, not looking in his direction. "My parents were . . . dissidents, freedom fighters, terrorists. Pick your own word of preference. Idiots stupid enough to anger the Council of Elders, at any rate. They were convicted of treason, and as an immediate family member, their treason was my treason."

Carth stared at her – the side of her head anyway, blonde hair falling across her face and making it impossible to read. "Wait a minute. You said you were twelve . . ."

The look in her eyes as she briefly raised her head made him shut up quickly. "My mother managed to get me off world before the net closed in. My father . . . he wasn't so lucky." The fingers of one hand drummed briefly against her thigh. "We ended up on Nar Shaddaa, my mother and I. You know anything about people from our world, Valden?"

He selected his words carefully. "I know that the female mercenaries from Emberlene are highly sought after. In the same way that Mandalorians and Echani are. Not much else."

She nodded. He thought she might be smiling, though her hair still obscured most of her face from his view. "My people would be most upset that your opinion of them is so low. In their own eyes, they are the very pinnacle of martial skill and deadliness in all the galaxy. The Mistral. The best of the best." A headshake. "My mother was one, and I was already training to join their number when I departed Emberlene for good. In a way, I suppose, Nar Shaddaa simply completed that training."

"From what I know of Nar Shaddaa, it can't have been the easiest place to grow up." Discomfort pricked at him. He felt almost guilty, like he was eavesdropping on something he shouldn't be. Absolutely nothing, then this . . .

She snorted. "By twelve on Emberlene I was already grown up. But yes, there are probably easier places to try to make a life than smuggler's moon. Still, countless millions do manage it, one way or another."

A pause. Carth started to open his mouth, but then she carried on again.

"My mother fell in with a particularly powerful Exchange boss, and through her so did I. She . . . she burned for revenge for what had happened on Emberlene, but to get her revenge she needed allies. On Nar Shaddaa your choice of allies is strictly limited."

Carth looked away. "I know what that's like," he said quietly; finally. "To become so consumed by the death of a loved one . . ."

Yolanda let out a bitter sounding half-laugh. "You think she wanted revenge for my father, Valden? You really don't know anything at all about my people, do you? Men are _lesser_ by the way of thinking that prevails on Emberlene. Ultimately expendable. My father was a source of good genes. Nothing more. My mother wanted vengeance for her stolen honour."

"So what happened?" he asked quietly as she stayed silent. The water running between the walls seemed louder than before.

"Eventually she went back to Emberlene, and in a way I suppose, she had her vengeance. She caused enough in the way of carnage anyway from what I hear. In the end though, inevitably, she was hunted down. So she did what any warrior of Emberlene would when faced with final dishonour. She killed herself." There was another pause, then venomously: "Deluded idiot."

"And you?"

"I worked off the debts that my mother had incurred as a thief and a spy for the Exchange. I was good at it. Made a name and reputation for myself, in a quiet sort of way. I don't fool myself as to the nature of the work I did, but it was preferable to wasting my life as a mindless slave to the demands of honour. Or a pleasure slave for that matter. Eventually, as is the way of things, my boss in the Exchange got himself entangled with a fish of a _far_ bigger order than himself. He died. I no longer had a job, and I left Nar Shaddaa behind me. Eventually other, more rewarding employment opportunities arose."

"Such as?" Carth inquired when it became obvious that she wasn't going to say anything more.

Yolanda just tilted her head back, blowing strands of blonde hair away from her face. "Don't push your luck, Valden." She sighed. "You know, I think you're only, what, the fourth person I've ever told all that to? I'm currently sitting here, struggling to work out why the hell I just did that."

Carth shrugged uncomfortably. "Maybe I have an honest face or something?"

This time she really did laugh properly, loud enough to make a pair of Duros sitting across the other side of the reception area turn and look at them, clearly annoyed by the disturbance. "You know, I think that's it exactly. Not your face though. What lies beneath your face. There's this . . . I don't know, innate sense of trustworthiness? It really is startlingly compelling somehow. Especially in this business. It's been a long time since I've spent much time around a straightforwardly honest person. Obviously I've lost that knack and no longer know how to deal with it properly."

He turned his gaze away from her, uncomfortable with the intensity with which she was looking at him. Embarrassed and annoyed.

"Or maybe I've been underestimating you all this time. Maybe the truth is you're so brilliantly skilled at all this that you've managed to fool me completely, right from the beginning."

Before he could formulate some kind of response to that, Carth realised that they were being watched, and not just by the Duros. A door behind the reception desk had opened. The person standing framed in it was looking at them intently.

It was a Caamasi. A very tall, stately looking creature covered in downy golden fur, highlighted on the face by dark-purple stripes. Strange and compelling blue-on-green eyes met Carth's gaze unblinkingly. Not the person they were here to see. Dr. Fleg'manus was supposedly a Carosite.

The Caamasi inclined its head towards Carth in acknowledgement and greeting, then started to cross towards them, the long skirts of the robes it wore making it look as if it was gliding rather than walking. Yolanda twisted round in her seat, looking up at it. Carth noted that her right hand had drifted closer to the holdout blaster he knew she wore. He had to forcibly stop himself from duplicating the gesture.

"Greetings, good sir. Ma'am." The Caamasi's voice was every bit as solemn and stately as its appearance. "I was wondering if I could impose myself for a moment of your time." Those latter words were addressed directly towards Carth.

"I'm sorry. I don't believe we've met before." Carth knew the Caamasi to be staunch supporters of the Republic, pacifists and negotiators with a strong reputation as being a voice of wisdom and moderation on the galactic stage. And unlike, for example, the Jedi, they were actually highly respected for that, instead of being condemned as a bunch of interfering meddlers. Nevertheless, something about the whole situation struck an off note with Carth, and he immediately felt his hackles rise.

"No," the Caamasi agreed. "We haven't. But nevertheless I believe there are matters we do need to talk about."

The Caamasi's words had a kind of _weight_ to them, which instinctively left Carth wanting to accept and agree to them. He resisted. "I don't believe I caught your name."

"My apologies for my lack of manners. My name is Dr Ulvol Ellas. Although there is no reason that either of you should be familiar with it."

_I know who you are, Captain Onasi._ The words echoed in his head.

Yolanda almost certainly couldn't have missed the jolt that passed through him, any further protest he had dying away unspoken. He looked at Dr Ellas warily.

_It may be better if this discussion takes place away from your companion's ears_.

"Of course, I'd be honoured. Yolanda, if you could stay and keep an eye out for Dr Fleg'manus so we don't miss our appointment . . .?"

She astonished him by not raising even the slightest hint of a protest. All she did was look at him a certain way, a small, cynical half-smile touching her lips. _Thinks this is all some kind of Republic intelligence thing_. He was quite content to leave her with that impression, because to be honest, he was baffled. For all he knew it _was_ a Republic intelligence thing.

"Might I ask why you are here, Captain?" Dr Ellas asked as soon as the door to his office whispered shut behind them.

"My disguise is that easy to see through, is it?"

The Caamasi fixed him with its startling and solemn eyes. "I'm sure that it's a perfectly good disguise. Perhaps to someone with an understanding of human faces as . . . scant as mine, the changes to the finer details are something I do not pick-up so well on?"

"We all look alike to you?" Carth interpreted.

Dr Ellas made a noise that Carth suspected was analogous to chuckling. "No, no. Not _entirely_ alike, at least."

"And you do have the Force to guide you."

"Force sensitivity is fairly common among my kind. In comparison with most other sentient species, at least."

It was far more than that though, in this case. "You're a Jedi, Dr Ellas?"

Those blue on green eyes regarded him unblinkingly. "I was once a part of that esteemable order, yes," he finally conceded. "Not to appear rude or impatient, Captain Onasi, but you have still to answer my initial question."

Carth hesitated, looking past the Caamasi and staring at an impressively large aquarium built into one wall. "We're here to see a colleague of yours – Dr. Fleg'manus – on a matter . . ." Carth caught himself. "On a matter I'm afraid I really can't discuss with you."

He could almost _feel_ Dr Ellas looking at him – looking at him with more than just his eyes. His own gaze moved on from the aquarium to a holo-screen playing the same news feed as the reception area outside.

Suddenly Dr Ellas made the chuckling noise again, though this time the tone was slightly different. Self-mocking perhaps. "How foolish and arrogant I am. When I saw you, waiting in the reception area I was so certain you had come for me."

"For you? Why would you expect me to come and see you, Doctor? You said yourself that we had never met before." Confusion – more confusion – burgeoned.

Carth suspected that Dr Ellas's expression constituted something like a smile. "Not really you specifically, Captain Onasi. But I was expecting _someone_. I've been waiting for more than a year now. Waiting for the day. When I saw you, knowing your connection . . . I just assumed without properly considering other possibilities."

"Waiting for what day?" Carth was now utterly perplexed by the entire conversation. "Wait." He made an internal leap. "You're waiting for Revan, aren't you? You already said you used to be part of the Jedi Order." Another leap, this one even further. "Were you . . . his old master?"

The Caamasi's 'smile' remained, wistful perhaps. "Nothing like that, Captain. I humbly apologise for wasting your time this way. I feel quite embarrassed by my obvious lack of wisdom and forethought."

A polite dismissal.

Carth wasn't quite ready to be dismissed yet. His thoughts were whirring "Why did you leave the Jedi order then? Why do you expect _him_ to seek you out?" And there had been no hint of denial on that part.

For a moment, it seemed that the Caamasi would not answer. Then Dr Ellas exhaled softly. "I suppose it doesn't hurt for you to know. As part of my duties to the order, I was required to do something that . . . ran counter to the oaths I had taken as a healer. It was, I believe, a necessary action, but not perhaps a moral one, and not one I could easily reconcile within myself once it was done. I decided that I had to step down from the Order until such time that I regain the inner equilibrium that is proper to a Jedi. Until that time, I work here, as a healer like I was before. Atonement perhaps."

"Wait, I don't understand." Not a word. Though there were sudden creeping thoughts . . .

There was another exhalation. "Memory has always been something that has had particular significance in Caamasi culture, Captain Onasi. As a healer, it has always been my area of specialisation."

Suddenly though, Carth wasn't really hearing anything that Dr Ellas was saying. He was staring intently at the holoscreen. On it, the image had just changed to show a sleek and gleaming passenger liner. The caption below read, very clearly "The _Sunrider_".

Heart thudding, a nauseous, twisting sensation in his gut, he strode across rapidly and turned the volume up.

". . . Just In. The Arravelle line luxury passenger cruiser, _The Sunrider_, flying on the Windward Colonies-Core loop, was attacked and destroyed this morning by unknown forces outside of the Jumus system. Jumasi officials have stated that no survivors have yet been found, and it is feared . . ."

- - -

"Get out of my way." Bastila's voice was clipped and icily precise. There was only the slightest distortion from her injured jaw now.

Canderous stood in front of her, an immovable Mandalorian wall, armour-plated in battle-scarred durasteel. He kept his expression fixed solid, eyes boring into her. "Now that ain't going to happen." He kept the words quiet, almost soft.

The skin around her eyes screwed up, bruised looking and drawn in deep lines. "I was actually stupid enough to think that I could trust you."

Something about the tone of her voice actually needled – pierced a surface that was seemingly rock and drew blood from it. "You _can_ trust me. You can trust me absolutely when I say I'm not going to let you do this."

"_Let_ me do this?" The edge to her voice became almost shrill. _Definitely getting better_. "Since when do I require your permission?"

At his back, Canderous could feel the static charge hanging around the metal cage. It made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. The ghostly glowing globules crawling near-frantically across the walls cast ever-shifting patterns of twisting light and shade. If he'd ever had any doubts about Bastila's claim that the ship was alive, they were non-existent right now.

"Maybe since I'm blocking your way?" He affected a shrug. It ended up slightly lopsided.

Suddenly, there was a sensation like the air hardening around him, something akin to a giant invisible fist trying to grip him and lock him firmly in place. Bastila started to limp around him . . .

He bit down hard on the inside of his mouth, tasting salty, coppery blood. The flare of pain allowed him to focus his thoughts into a dense ball and caused the grip on him to snap abruptly. He shifted round to cut her off again. "Now that was low, Princess. I thought you were better than that."

She glowered at him. "Damn it, Canderous. I have to do this. I don't want to do it, but I have to. Malefic has to be stopped. If there was any good alternative, believe me, I'd take it."

The static sensation grew stronger by the moment. If the ship was capable of reaching out and striking him down, it surely would have right then.

Canderous locked his gaze with hers, dismissing the creepy thought as so much fraking bantha crap. "Let's be honest here shall we? No punches pulled. This won't work, and I see it in your eyes that part of you at least knows it won't work. As long as Malefic has that fraking crown of his, you're not going to be able to take the fleet from him. You're not even going to be able to disrupt it to any great extent. You're just going to end up being subsumed. Another part of his forces. Another tool for him to use. And if you think the situation is bad now, you wait till he has Battle Meditation to go alongside his two-hundred odd capitol ships."

"Is that how weak you think I am?" Bitterness crept into her voice.

He grimaced. Tamar should be dealing with this. Not him. Someone, at least, who knew what to do with words and emotions. His own. Hers. "There's a big difference between weakness and realistic knowledge of your capabilities. You've faced him and that crown twice now, and I know I'm still alive _solely_ because of you. But tell me. How much better, exactly, do you think it's going to go when you face it and him again?"

"It's the only way." The words rang hollowly. "Please Canderous. This is hard enough already."

He kept his expression pitiless. "I thought you'd got over this. This urge for martyrdom. For stupid, sacrificial atonement, and making yourself suffer."

"This is not the same thing."

"So what happens when you end up serving Malefic like you ended up serving Malak? That's how it turned out the last time you took it upon yourself to single-handedly save the galaxy."

Her face was white. "You _utter_ bastard."

"Yeah, that's me. Never claimed different. But ask yourself, is this really your idea? Or is it this ship's? Did it plant the idea in your head when you spoke to it, maybe? Perhaps it wants out of here, to join its departed . . ." He groped for the correct word. "Comrades. And it has to know that the only way it can accomplish this is by persuading you to cooperate."

He saw her flinch, but she didn't back down.

Inside him, there was something close to desperation. The kind of fear he'd once had before going into battle, before that had all scabbed over and he'd become all but inured to feelings of any kind. He pressed on hard, knowing that it was the one opening he had. "Are you going to be using the ship, Bastila, or is the ship going to be using you? I've seen how you've changed over the past weeks. Grown into something more. A real Jedi? Hah! I can't believe I'm saying any of this. But right now, this isn't _you_ talking."

She turned her back on him, and he saw a shudder pass up the length of her spine. The shudder echoed through him. Weakness. Strength. He didn't know.

When she spoke again, her voice was muffled. "Even if you're right in every word, I still have to do it. There are some facts that are unassailable. If we don't get this ship working, we're stuck here. No comms signal will penetrate this void, and no one on the outside is _ever_ going to find us. We both know the expeditionary force must have been destroyed."

Frustration gnawed at Canderous's guts like an infestation of hungry blood worms. He felt exhausted, like he was embroiled in a life-or-death sabre fight instead of just a conversation. "What about the bond?"

"The bond?"

"To Revan. What d'you think I mean, Princess?" It came out as a brutal snap he hadn't quite intended. "Will that reach out of here?"

There was no answer right away. "I don't know," she said finally; emptily.

"Then try it, damn it. It's got to be better than what you're proposing."

"Why are you bothered so damn much about this, Canderous? Why does my fate matter to you at all?"

He flinched, and was very glad she couldn't see him. For a moment, his mouth was fixed, turned down at the corners. "Because I fraking care about what happens to you, maybe? There. Satisfied?"

Another shudder passed through her, stronger than the first. There was a long silence, the shifting patterns of light seemingly becoming more and more frantic all the time. The ship sensing its grip slipping. "The bond . . . It's almost gone." Her voice was hollow – barely audible. "Just a thread. Hardly there at all anymore."

"Just try it. Please, just try it."

There was no response. She stood silent and completely motionless.

- - -

"The target has made it clear." The voice, belonging to one of the Echani mercenaries – one of _her_ mercenaries; that thought was still slightly odd – came over Yuthura's earpiece, crackling with a faint undertone of distortion.

"Fire after it. Near misses, and a few glancing hits off its shields if you can manage it. But nothing to risk destroying or crippling it." Tamar's voice, calmly businesslike, answered almost immediately.

He was standing about halfway across the _Rancorous's_ bridge from her, hands moving across the controls in front of him almost too fast for the eye to follow. She could sense an absolute intensity of focus from him to the exclusion of anything else that was somehow . . . disturbing. No, only disturbing with knowledge of what he once had been. But nevertheless . . . her lips compressed, head tails flexing distractedly on her shoulders.

"Wait ninety seconds, then scramble a pursuit. Make it look good. Make him work for it, but _don't_ actually catch him."

"Aye, sir."

And suddenly the focus seemed to let up, just like that. There was no external change, but for all that, it was clear. He looked round from his console and their eyes met. His expression was impassive, no hint of a smile – externally at least. The tips of her head tails traced a simple pattern that she knew he understood. _Everything all right?_

There was a small nod. His eyes moved on from her.

She touched her earpiece again. "Okay, Gare, you can stand down."

"Lady Ban," the acknowledgement came.

"Pass on my appreciation to the others for a job well done." Then she cut the link.

Tamar was communicating with T3: "What about the tracking devices?"

"Beep-woo-weep-bop."

Translation: the primary one had been discovered and deactivated. Exactly as they'd anticipated really, if the Miraluka was anything like competent.

"And the secondary?"

The secondary transmitter had been implanted subcutaneously while Arathor Dann had been unconscious. It was extremely small, and almost undetectable, made of materials that would not show up on an x-ray and could even evade most full-body scans looking specifically for that sort of thing.

"Beep-woo."

Gone too. Now that was downright impressive. Not so much the fact he'd found it, but that he'd found it and dealt with it so quickly in such a pressurised situation.

"And the tertiary?"

The passive, hidden among his teeth. The one they'd gambled that Dann would miss after discovering the first two. The decoy and the real one, as they were supposed to seem.

"Woo-wop-beep."

Still in place.

"Beep-beep-wee-woo-beep-bop," T3 added rapid fire.

Not only was the tertiary tracking device still in place, but according to the tell-tales that T3 had been monitoring, the Miraluka had accessed the computer files they'd left open for him to steal. Yuthura felt a small surge of relief. The first hurdle, at least, had been cleared. That last bit in particular, so crucial, had been a chancy gamble on both Arathor's skill level and temperament.

"Well done Tee."

Seemingly satisfied, Tamar handed control of the Rancorous's bridge back to the normal duty crew. As he walked past her position, she fell smoothly and silently into step with him. Jolee joined them as they stepped into the main bridge turbolift.

"Well, that was . . . elaborate," he commented, breaking the silence.

Yuthura looked on wordlessly as Tamar glanced across at him. _Jedi Master_. Sometimes it was easy to forget that of Jolee. She suspected that suited him just fine. Finally, Tamar shrugged. "I . . . _felt_ his mind. There was something familiar about it. Something familiar from _before_."

"Oh yes? Well out with it then. No sense tiptoeing around the terentatek, as it were."

"Sith conditioning. Elite Sith intelligence conditioning, designed to make a captured operative all but impossible to crack. From the amount of knowledge I have on it in here, I think it might even be something I invented personally." The words were clinical, but she knew from other more subtle signs that he was disturbed.

"Interesting," Jolee commented, after a distinct pause.

"He's one of hers." Tamar's voice was flat, in a distant place.

"So you decided to use him as bait?"

"Oh, I'd already decided to use him as bait. I just wasn't quite sure before then who I was baiting." Tamar spoke quietly. To Yuthura he felt very tightly contained, all of his defensive walls tightly and solidly in place, letting very little of himself leak out.

"Uh-huh." Jolee scratched the tip of his nose. "You know what, in my experience, is the biggest problem when fishing unfamiliar waters?"

"I'm sure you'll tell me."

"Oh, you're _sure_ are you? Starting to find the old man predictable are you? Thinking maybe you've got him all figured out?"

Tamar gave a mock shudder. "Now there's a frightening thought."

"Now what was I saying before you interrupted so rudely? Ah, yes. Fishing. The biggest problem with fishing unfamiliar waters is that all too often you can end up inadvertently hooking something big enough to capsize your fishing boat."

"I'm not _entirely_ unaware of the risks. Would you have preferred it if I tried to pull the information out of him by force?"

Jolee grunted. A partial concession. "And then there's always the possibility that you're not the one who's doing the trolling here."

"We'll see."

The turbolift reached its destination. The doors slid open, but suddenly Tamar seemed to have become fixed in place.

Yuthura stared at him, able to _feel_ something. Not sure what it was she felt.

- - -

As the door closed again behind Yolanda, Carth resumed his pacing around the pristine apartment located in one of Kamari station's habitation rings. He went clockwise this time, retracing the path he'd already walked a dozen times. One hand raked distractedly at his hair, further disarraying it. The other hand held a glass, all but forgotten, half-full of dark amber liquid.

"This has to stop." As though to emphasise his point, Carth stopped his pacing to match his words and fixed Yolanda with his gaze.

Everything around him seemed strange and disconnected and jittery. The meeting with Dr Fleg'manus had finished more than an hour ago. It was nothing more than a hazy blur in his memory, details a smeared mess. The one concrete thing they'd got, was that the Carosite would run the equation for them, but it would take _time_.

She looked back at him levelly, seating herself in the middle of the room's lone couch, arms spreading out to either side along its back, legs crossing smoothly. He didn't have any clue how she could be so utterly phlegmatic and calm.

"From this point forwards we're not running away any more." He shook his head distractedly. His earlier threat to the Catcher rang hollowly

"And so you're going to do exactly what the Catcher is goading you to do."

He grimaced at her. "Two thousand innocent civilians died. They died because of me. Because of the fact I ran from him." And Bliss. _Never abandoned anyone on a mission before_ . . .. Those words he'd spoken drifted back to him, taunting. He was a hypocrite and a liar. He'd abandoned her utterly, to the very worst sort of damnation.

"No, two thousand people are now dead because of a psychotic Sith assassin. A psychotic Sith assassin, who, it seems, knows who you really are, and exactly what buttons he needs to push to get to you." Yolanda sounded exasperated suddenly. "Were you never taught how to compartmentalise?"

Carth gritted his teeth so hard that it almost became a snarl. "As long as we keep on running from him, he's going to keep on doing this, again and again."

"For as long as he knows the affect it has on you," she agreed. "For as long as he thinks it gains him something." So utterly calm it was stupefying.

He whirled away from her, back to one of the viewports, gazing out at the smooth arc of featureless plasteel that constituted the bulk of the view. He started to lift the glass he held to his lips, but saw that his hand was shaking and lowered it again. Instead, he tried to draw in deep breaths. His collar felt too tight.

Peripherally, he was aware of Yolanda rising from the couch; crossing to stand a couple of paces behind him. He didn't look round.

"There's something else that's bothering you, isn't there? Something that's been bothering you since you regained consciousness on the _Sunrider_. It's to do with him, isn't it? Something he said?"

He didn't say anything.

Her hand touched his shoulder. The contact made him flinch involuntarily.

"If it affects you, then the situation we're in right now, it affects me too." Her voice was unflinchingly steady.

"I'm sorry. It's just . . ." _That you're utterly pathetic?_ "Everything keeps spinning round and round, twisting into knots. I can feel him there, lurking on the edges. Waiting and watching until an opening allows him in." He gestured towards a bottle resting on a low, glass-topped table. It was nearer empty than full, containing the same amber liquid as his half-drained glass. "I had a thought that I could dodge him by finding oblivion through that." He shrugged. "Seemed as logical as anything else that's happened recently. Utterly pathetic." Echoing the inner voice.

She reached around him. Cool, strong fingers eased the glass free of his grasp. He didn't resist, and she tipped its contents into the nearest plant pot. Her voice, when she spoke again near his ear was . . . different. "Perhaps I can help you find another way of dodging him."

He turned slowly and stared at her.

- - -

Morrigance pulled up one last report. She was scheduled to drop out of hyperspace in about twenty minutes.

It was a very short report; the results of a thorough search against fleet personal records based on a hologram provided by one of her most able operatives. The report showed the photographs of the ten faces that came closest to matching that of the hologram provided, based on an advanced interpolative matching algorithm designed to filter out even the most modern facial prosthetics.

Her gaze stopped on the fourth of the photographs on the page. It was a very familiar face, belonging to one of the Republic's most celebrated war heroes.

_Carth Onasi_.

Now that _was_ interesting. And as coincidences went, it was one she couldn't bring herself to ignore.

* * *

_Thanks again to Jedi Boadicea for beta reading._

_Also, massive thanks for all the reviews and feedback._


	16. Dark Algebra

**16. Dark Algebra**

Admiral Bortha sat back in the command chair on the bridge of the Living Fleet's new flagship, in theory master of everything he surveyed. It was quite a nice theory, he thought. But unfortunately, he couldn't fool himself into believing it for a moment.

On the main viewscreen, the world of Korriz hung sullenly, a grey and dismal sphere – or perhaps that was simply his mood. The Living Fleet had, just minutes previously, finished annihilating the Sith world's considerable planetary defences, before pounding a sizable military base located in the Southern hemisphere to sterile dust. Everything about the operation had gone with perfect smoothness and precision, better than even the most optimistic simulations could have suggested. They hadn't lost more than half a dozen fighter drones in the entire engagement, and none of the capitol ships were even scratched.

As Admiral, de facto commander-in-chief of the entire fleet, Bortha would have liked to have been able to take some small amount of credit for the attack's success. He couldn't manage to delude himself even that far, though. Never, in his entire career had he been so entirely superfluous. It hadn't felt like a battle at all. Instead, it had felt like some kind of sick and twisted voyeurism – standing by and gawping as someone was kicked to death in front of him.

He glanced around at the skeleton crew occupying the bridge.

They'd been personally selected by him from his old command crew on the _Excelsior_. Watching them now, trying to appear busy – or at least vaguely occupied – was enough to draw a faint hint of a smile to his lips.

The bridge controls had reconfigured themselves somehow at Morrigance's behest, changed from Rakatan to something more suitable for use by 'Slaves of the Builders'. Although hardly ideal, they were now at least understandable and useable. Should events actually call for them to be used.

His smile faded swiftly to nothing. Slaves of the Builders seemed, right now, an uncomfortably apt term.

The Living Fleet's strength, Morrigance had gone on to explain to him in the one lengthy conversation they'd had – its perfect unity and flawless coordination, more than two hundred separate 'bodies' under the control of a unifying, gestalt mind – could also, in extremis, become its only real weakness. That was why each ship was to be crewed, so that they could also respond on an individual, uncoordinated basis to particular, individual threats should the need arise.

That need had not arisen. And after the way events here at Korriz had unfurled, Bortha struggled to foresee _any_ set of circumstances where it possibly would.

If either Revan or Malak had possessed such a weapon, they would all now be supping like emperors on Coruscant . . . The thought died away, oddly colourless and empty. If Revan or Malak had had such a weapon, and the war with the Republic had been won, the likelihood was they would simply be fighting another civil war now, like the one the Sith were currently engaged in except on a massively larger and more destructive scale.

_War after war after war_. Even a warrior could eventually grow sick of it.

Bortha let out a breath, fingers drumming distractedly against the armrest. _Morrigance_ . . .

Perhaps he should feel relieved by the recent turn of events, and the sudden change in leadership. After all, compared with Malefic, she was the height of reasonableness and rationality. Almost civilised, in fact. Except, the feeling he had when he looked into her polished mirror mask, and listened to that utterly emotionless voice . . .

The drumming of his fingers stopped.

Malefic, in the end, he had almost understood, and had in turn known – more or less – where _he'd_ stood. If he failed his master, or otherwise drew his ire in any one of a myriad of ways, one fate awaited. Swift and brutal.

But that was the way of the Sith, and it had been part of his life for a long time now. A person could get used to almost anything.

With Morrigance, when he looked at her, even those small certainties and comforts crumbled. He got the impression that he was simply a game piece, and a very small game piece at that. A pawn.

And the purpose of a pawn was always to be sacrificed.

With her, he suspected, everything boiled down to matters of cold calculus and dark, compassionless algebra. As soon as he ceased to figure in her plans, he would simply cease. And not even serving her to perfection would keep him even notionally safe.

"Sir, a Dagger-class corvette has just dropped out of hyperspace, beyond the fourth planet."

Bortha had to suppress a jolt as Griggs's voice interrupted his ruminations. Not that the event itself was unexpected, except perhaps in its promptness. "And have they transmitted the expected code keys, Commander?"

The image on the viewscreen shifted to show the Corvette, sharp and slender as its designation suggested. More Dark Jedi, was Bortha's guess, though he had not actually been told. He'd also heard that Korriz was home to ancient ruins, perhaps of Rakatan origin. It was the only reason he could fathom for the decision to strike here. Tactically it had gained them nothing.

"Receiving transmission now, Admiral. Codes being checked . . . They clear."

"Then allow them to pass through the perimeter, Commander."

An interesting exchange, Bortha thought dryly as he sat back and the viewscreen once more shifted to show Korriz. One in which they'd almost been able to pretend for a moment or two that they had some kind of relevance, and even influence, over the course of events.

Abruptly a shudder passed through him that he couldn't contain, his expression twisting in a grimace. Of course, all this worry about what Morrigance had in store for them was rather tiptoeing around the very big monster lurking in the back of his thoughts.

Or more accurately, in the heart of the ship, about a hundred metres directly below this chair he sat in, surrounded by a metal cage with filaments and tendrils and thick metal cables all growing through his red-armoured carapace, into flesh. Every time Bortha closed his eyes, that twisted, bisected visage was there, glaring at him as the fine scales covering it shifted colour constantly in furious, writhing patterns.

The rage – tightly bound violence, searching for release – seemed to permeate every fibre of the vessel around him.

_I didn't betray you, my Lord. I hope you are able to see that_.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat again, unable to escape the feeling of eyes watching him accusingly. Unable to escape the knowledge that no excuse of his would ever remotely appease them.

-

Juhani cursed beneath her breath as the sea of furred and extravagantly clothed bodies flowed shut in front of her, blocking her path. Her gaze scanned rapidly over the tops of the Bothans' heads, trying to get a renewed visual fix on the thief. She could still sense _him_ – and in particular, the lightsaber that he'd snatched from her belt as she perused a market stall – but amidst the thronging, constantly shifting crowds, the directional sense was vague, all but drowned out by the random background Force noise of so many lives packed into so small an area.

_To your left. __Two o'clock_

Belaya's telepathic call had the Cathar's head swinging round rapidly. Her amber eyes fixed on a flicker of movement as a slight figure barged through a group of shopping Bothan females, drawing outraged exclamations, before darting rapidly towards a narrow gap between two pristine white plastocrete buildings.

Inside her head, Juhani made a rapid set of calculations. Physically, she more than had the strength and stature to barge her way through the mass of smaller Bothans blocking her path, but for all that the idea appealed to the more primal elements of her Cathar blood, that approach was going to cause problems, and likely injuries too. Instead, she drew on the Force, using it to bolster already powerful thigh muscles, and launched herself onto the top of the row of market stalls running parallel to her path.

Shouts of awe and surprise went up around her. She could feel it clearly as hundreds of sets of eyes suddenly noticed her as something more than just another visiting alien to be politely disdained, turning her way and staring. Fingers pointed and voices rose in babbling cacophony.

This type of attention had always been something that made her profoundly uncomfortable; something she'd tried to avoid at all costs. She pushed the external distractions from her mind, focusing on sprinting forwards across the stall roofs. Focusing on each precisely weighted footfall.

Carbon-fibre slats bounced and clattered beneath her feet as she ran, more shouts rising in her wake, anger from stall owners now mixing with the more general surprise. She kept her attention routed firmly towards the thief and her lightsaber though, determined not to loose track of him.

She reached the end of the market stalls. A further Force jump, much larger than the first, carried her to a veranda overlooking the market square, another leap following so quickly that it looked almost like she'd hit and bounced straight off, propelling her onto a sloping, red-tiled roof. Her feet gripped easily and she was off and running again with the barest moment's delay.

Brilliant sunlight poured down around her, Alyaeroon's gleaming white towers rising with stately elegance on every side. In the distance, the city's tightly packed rooftops eventually gave way to a seemingly endless vista of lush green savannah. Juhani paid the broader view little mind, concentrating on following the alleyway that ran alongside her, about six metres below her feet.

Leave it to Bothawui and the Bothans to have even back alleys that were utterly immaculate, she thought dryly as she looked down.

_And be grateful they do_, Belaya's thought came back, catching Juhani slightly by surprise. She hadn't realised she'd been broadcasting. _If not we might have lost him altogether by now_.

The thief's back was visible in front of her, his pace seeming to flag slightly, allowing her to gradually close in. He was small for a Bothan, she noted. Scrawny too, and from his mind she was getting a muddy mixture of desperation shot through with flashes of hope that he might actually have pulled this off. _Not far now_. _Not far . . . _At a guess, she put him somewhere in mid adolescence.

Another leap, this one purely her own muscle-power, carried her across a side-branch in the alleyway and onto an adjoining roof. Tiles broke off beneath her feet as she landed, sliding out from under her. A Cathar's sense of balance was superb by any standards though, and she didn't even have to break stride.

As the tiles shattered percussively on the alley floor, the young Bothan cast a glance back over his shoulder, spotted her, and tried frantically to increase his pace. To her heightened senses, his breathing was loud and ragged, his fear obvious and intense. She was close enough now that she could even hear the trip-hammer of his heartbeat, thousands of generations of predatory instinct stirring into life.

Abruptly, he veered left, scrambling through a gateway leading to a covered garden and slamming it shut behind him.

Juhani dropped down from the roof, increasing the air resistance around her to slow her fall, landing silently in a crouch. Her remaining short-bladed lightsaber came to hand, though she didn't immediately ignite it.

Beyond the gateway, she could sense the young Bothan, no longer moving. He was . . . agitated.

She frowned hard. There was clearly someone with him. Several someones, perhaps. But she couldn't get any kind of clear mental fix on them. Sometimes there seemed to be at least four or five separate presences. Then they all merged again into one amorphous mass. Then even that impression faded, and there was just the boy. Her stolen lightsaber.

Flashes of Taris resurfaced. Of being cut adrift from the Force, helpless amid the benighted ruins and the acidic snowmelt. Ysalamiri, Tamar had explained to her, and that had gone some way to mitigating her persistent sense of failure, on a rational level at least. She bared her teeth in annoyance. _Calm. Discipline_.

_How far away_, she sent to Belaya.

_Thirty seconds_, came back.

_I'm going in. Pull the teeth from the trap_.

_Juhani, wait_ . . .

But she was already pushing through the gate.

The garden beyond was formed out of a series of asymmetric plastocrete blocks, creating a number of separate level areas. The sun shone down brightly through a trellis roof, creating squares of shade and brilliant light. Brightly flowering climbing plants abounded, covering almost every surface and filling the air with an intensely cloying mix of overlapping perfumes. Her nostrils squeezed shut, almost overwhelmed. Everything was oddly quiet. There was almost a sense of having stepped into a completely different place and time; a strange tranquillity, aeons away from the surrounding bustle of the city.

_Sonic baffles_, a more rational part of her brain supplied.

The thief – looking more and more like a frightened child – stood about twenty metres away, staring at her and trembling, shoulders hunched. Some said, usually as a derogative, that Bothans had evolved from one of Bothawui's many species of rodent. This one looked on the point of devolving back.

Juhani stepped towards him cautiously, her Force senses extending outwards. "You don't have to be afraid of me. I won't harm you."

No response.

"Who forced you to do this?" She'd known even before he lifted the blade that it wasn't his own desire that drove him.

He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could find his voice, another Bothan, much larger and older, stepped out of the house behind him. Juhani felt the boy's fear spike.

The new arrival put an arm gently around the young thief's shoulders, meeting Juhani's gaze calmly. A gunmetal circlet – a neural band, designed to mask the mind of its wearer – gleamed dully around his brow. Something smelt wrong. Something that even all the intermingling odours of the flowers couldn't entirely mask.

She stretched a hand out. Her stolen lightsaber leapt from the thief's clutches and returned directly to her grasp. He let out a startled yelp.

The older Bothan's fur rippled. He seemed to be amused. "You let him steal it, did you not? You could have done that at any time."

Juhani inclined her head in agreement, watching them both warily. "But then I would not be here, meeting you."

For a moment, the older Bothan simply looked at her, inscrutable. "Indeed not," he said finally. The younger one simply looked chagrined.

"Wouldn't it have been simpler to send a message?" she asked him after a short, uncomfortable pause. "I usually at least read all of my correspondence." Something here was definitely wrong. She could feel her fur lifting, both of her lightsabers held tight and ready.

Then there was a moment of relief. Belaya had arrived, she sensed. She remained outside of the garden, somewhere overhead, looking in. Juhani silently cautioned her to remain there for the moment.

"Yes, but do you have any idea how many other people here on Bothawui read it too? You'd be amazed. Or perhaps you wouldn't." She thought that expression was a smile.

There was a tiny flicker of movement off to the left of her. An infinitesimal shifting of vegetation. She whirled, lightsabers igniting, brilliant blue. Stealth fields dissipated suddenly, something big and dark seemingly materialising from thin air in front of her. Other shapes flickered into view around it, bearing down on her.

She backed off slowly, staring, not wishing to resort to violence quite yet if it could be avoided. The upper, rational part of her brain not wanting to resort to violence, at least.

"Hold!" The Bothan's voice was sharp.

There were four of them in all. Big, stocky, dark-skinned creatures with odd sharp-toothed mouths that slightly resembled those of lampreys. All of them carried extremely vicious looking vibroblades they appeared to be very comfortable in wielding. Startled, she recognised them as Dashade, a species supposedly even nearer to extinction than her own. Their homeworld, Urkupp, had been destroyed forty years ago in the same Cron Drift supernova that had seared the surface of Ossus.

As a species they'd been almost universally feared and loathed, strongly force-resistant killers found in the employ of Sith, or several of the more dangerous galactic criminal organisations. Few had felt much grief at their supposed demise.

"Interesting company you keep," she said finally to the Bothan, carefully measuring her chances. Not good, she concluded. The Dashade looked extremely disciplined and capable.

"My bodyguards. One cannot be too careful these days. I assure you, Jedi Juhani, they do not mean you any harm. You can extinguish your lightsabers."

"Perhaps." She kept the lightsabers ignited though, eyeing the Dashade cautiously. They eyed her straight back, a wall of hard, rippling muscle and impersonal malice. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

"My name is Krusk Fey'lya."

Of clan Alya, who counted the southern city of Alyaeroon as their traditional familial stronghold. Juhani had been dealing with various Alyas over the past few days, as she and Belaya had attempted to arrange for provision to be made for Seboba's former slaves. During that time she'd grown heartily sick of all the tangled layers of double-talk and seemingly pointless intrigue with which even the most apparently straightforward action was invested. As a lesson in patience, it had been valuable, but exceedingly testing.

"And what do you want with me, Master Fey'lya?" she inquired politely.

"The point then, Cathar? Very well." He gestured for the smaller adolescent Bothan to run inside. "I had hoped that I might be able to meet a . . . friend of yours. Although I understand perfectly why he would not wish to set foot here, of all places. Very wise of him."

"What do you want with my . . . friend then?" No real need for him to clarify whom he meant. If she could Force leap through a gap in the trellis, a few precisely measured lightsaber strokes should bring an entire section of it down on top of the Dashade. That would probably be her best chance if it came to a fight.

"To pass on a message." Krusk made a waving gesture. "In many ways you will serve even better than he would though, hero of the Star Forge."

"And the message," she prompted, having no wish to linger over this.

His fur rippled again. "I represent an organisation with strong interests in seeing that the Republic persists long into the future in something resembling its current form. The attention of yourself and your . . . friend, should be directed back towards the centre. To Coruscant and the Jedi order itself, perhaps."

"You work for Hulas," Juhani stated flatly. She knew a little about the Genoharadan.

Krusk shrugged. The neural band covered any other reaction. "Who I work for, Jedi Juhani, is neither here nor there." He had produced an object that looked like a portable comm unit. "Now please, I really do suggest that you put those lightsabers of yours away."

She just looked at him, unblinking.

"With both hands full, you won't be able to catch this when I toss it to you," he explained.

With a fractional nod, she finally did as he asked, dazzling blue blade-beams extinguishing simultaneously. Almost to her surprise, the Dashade did not immediately try to jump her. She caught the comm. unit easily.

"It is already programmed to link you to your former master, Jedi Quatra. All you have to do is activate it."

Juhani looked up at Krusk sharply. _Quatra?_

"I thought you would find it easier to hear of the situation from a source you trusted. Don't worry," he hastened as her eyes narrowed. "She has no connection to our . . . group, and indeed, I'm sure she'll be most surprised to hear from you." A casual shrug. "Or perhaps not. Who can say with Jedi?"

Juhani's gaze dropped briefly to the blank screen of the comm. unit, then returned to the Bothan.

"I'll leave you to conduct you communication in privacy." Krusk barked something in a language Juhani didn't recognise towards the Dashade, who immediately withdrew towards the house. "Good day to you, Jedi. I would request that you _don't_ try to follow us."

With that, both he and his sinister bodyguard retreated inside. Immediately, a force field sprang up blocking the way after them.

After a few seconds inspecting it, Juhani concluded that she wouldn't be getting through it any time soon, even with the aid of her lightsabers. A shadow passed over and she looked up. Belaya dropped down through a gap in the trellis and landed lightly in front of her.

They shared a look.

"Did you catch all that?" Juhani asked her quietly.

Belaya nodded, frowning. "Very . . . odd." She gave a small headshake. "Being around Revan these past days has proved most enlightening," she murmured, barely audible. "Seeing the way that everything twists and reshapes itself around him. He's like a carelessly drifting singularity, warping what he goes near whether he means to or not. And he continues to inflict damage even once he has passed on by."

Juhani started to retort, annoyed by her friend's tone and implication, but Belaya gestured to the comm. unit. "May I take a look?"

After a slight pause, Juhani handed it over.

Belaya switched it on immediately. For about ten seconds all that the screen displayed was a smoothly rotating holoNet logo. Then a face appeared. In some ways, it was absolutely familiar – thin and hard and wiry, framed by dark, short-cropped hair, eyes piercing and hawkish. In others, it was entire light years different, older and wearier to a degree that simple passage of time couldn't begin to explain.

The woman blinked slowly, as if just roused from sleep. "Belaya? Is that really you?"

"Yes, Master Quatra," Belaya answered, slightly hesitant. "It is me."

The smile of relief that spread across Quatra's lips startled something deep in Juhani's core. It spoke somehow of a weakness and uncertainty that she had never thought to see from this source. "Praise the Force. The messages I sent have finally found you then?"

Belaya's hesitation was longer this time. "Your messages, Master Quatra? Do you mean to say that the Bothan really was working for you?"

"The Bothan?" Quatra frowned. "I take it then, that you aren't here on Coruscant?"

"Bothawui."

"Bothawui," Quatra repeated. "Hmph." Suddenly she was peering past Belaya's shoulder. "Is someone there with you?"

Juhani cleared her throat, unaccountably nervous. The last time she'd seen Quatra, she'd thought that she'd killed the woman, gripped by Cathar battle rage. She had been meaning to seek her old teacher out at some point, but the Taris assignment had arisen, and since then . . . well. "Juhani, Master Quatra."

"Juhani." Quatra's smile then made her decidedly uncomfortable, totally belying the woman she'd previously known – cool, calm and serenely controlled; someone she had wanted to emulate; someone she had wanted to be. Now the Jedi Master's expression was of someone who is simply glad to have some vaguely good news, drawn through with relief. "You are looking well, my dear. It has been _far_ too long since we last spoke. I hope you haven't come to entirely hate me because of what I did to you?"

She wasn't honestly sure what she felt. Embarrassed over how she remembered herself from the back then? That, and other things too. "I now understand the necessity of the lesson perfectly. And it is me who has need to apologise . . ."

Quatra made a small, soft noise, cutting her off. The corner of her mouth twitched fractionally. "Understanding something and accepting it are very different. It was a cruel lesson, and I often question the method I chose to impart it by." She paused. "Please, don't think I have been ignoring you since. I have been following your progress closely, but it was essential you made the next stage in your development on your own. I always knew that you were destined for great things though, Juhani. That is why I may sometimes have seemed to push you so harshly."

Juhani inclined her head, those words making her feel even more uncomfortable. She wasn't sure what to say.

Belaya interrupted then, much to her relief. "Master, what were the messages you tried to send?"

"It was a request for help, I suppose." Quatra frowned, clearly hesitant. It appeared to take her several seconds to compose herself fully. "I have become more and more certain over these past weeks. There is a darkness here on Coruscant, right at the heart of our Order. A darkness that obscures everything, and threatens to consume us all. I am certain of it."

-

Carth found himself staring at Yolanda's hair. He blinked slowly, dimly aware he was on the edge of falling asleep. And that sleep meant either the Catcher or Bliss. He wasn't sure which prospect was the more frightening one.

Except . . . right then he wasn't really scared.

For some reason that had nothing to do with logic, but was completely certain nonetheless, he was sure that the Catcher's gaze was nowhere close to him right then. Stupidity. Utter stupidity. But still he let himself drift.

A crack of bright light emanating from the bathroom made Yolanda's hair gleam, a warm, deep blonde like poured honey. He reached out to touch it, but his fingertips dropped short. He was too lethargic to stretch further. A tiny smile touched his lips. It was, he thought, almost amazed by the realisation, actually genuine.

The hair, of course, was not attached to Yolanda's head.

It had slid off in his hands several hours ago, right back at the beginning, when urgency had been its own form of madness. A desperate need to push the entire universe away, yet at the same time find _something_. Cling to something that would hold everything else together.

He exhaled softly, rolling onto his back. The bed beside him was empty, the sheets a tangled mess, still warm with the heat from her body and slightly damp. The scent on the air . . . it pulled him back, more fully to consciousness. It had been a long time since he'd smelt that particular scent, and he struggled to pinpoint how he felt.

A sound from the bathroom cut off. The sonic shower. He glanced across at the chrono, then grimaced. Much, much later than he'd thought. For a moment he struggled to work out where all the time had disappeared, but then realised that, yeah, there had been places along the way.

He groaned, a hand coming up to rub at his eyes as he swore beneath his breath. A moment later, he forced himself to move rather than slip back into dozing, and rolled out of bed, pulling on discarded clothing in a kind of semi-functional half-trance.

Briefly, he hesitated outside the bathroom, before pushing inside.

Yolanda stood with her back to him, half-dressed in the sort of functional plain grey underwear designed to go comfortably under a flightsuit or lightweight armour. Her hands were doing something at the back of her neck with the implant interface there. He winced slightly as he watched her feeding something that looked _far_ too long into the connector port, until it plugged flush against her flesh.

Their eyes met in the mirror. They _were_ green, he noted, even without the contacts. Well, at least as near to green as they were to brown. She didn't say anything, and a moment later, the eye contact broke.

Carth let the door swing shut; cleared his throat. He nodded towards the implant she'd just connected. "What's that?" _Utterly lame_.

There was a slight pause before a response came. "Visual acuity upgrade," she stated matter-of-factly "Allows me to see the blood flow to a person's face. Acts like a lie detector, and lets me read a person's emotional state to a high degree of accuracy. For species that use their faces to convey emotional state, anyway." After a second or so she added, "I thought it might come in useful for our meeting with Dr. Fleg'manus"

"Ah."

"Although there are other uses too. Right now, for instance, Valden, I can see you're embarrassed as hell, struggling to work out what to say, and wondering how you could have let last night happen."

"Right." He turned away quickly, moving towards the shower cubical, uncomfortably sure that the back of his neck was managing to give away almost as much as his face would have. _Damn it_. This wasn't how he'd wanted this to go at all.

A noise came from her that sounded like a sigh. "You know, of course, that I'm teasing you, Valden?" Her voice was cool and slightly distant. He got an inkling then that she was perhaps even more uncomfortable than he was. "In order to improve your vision, an implant has to fit either in or over your eyes. This is an advanced response package. Improves my reaction times and reflexes."

"I knew all that," he lied. Then he added, "You were wrong about the 'wondering how I could have let last night happen' part, by the way. I don't regret it." And he really didn't. That was perhaps the most surprising revelation of all.

After a moment, she nodded. "I thought maybe you and your old partner . . ."

"Her name was Bliss." He shook his head. "And no, we weren't like that. That was the first time we'd worked together." A sigh of his own. "We'd only met that day."

"Oh." Her gaze started to drop, then locked more tightly with his. He saw her lips compress. "Let's not turn this into more than it was, hey, Valden?"

"I didn't think I was doing that, was I?"

After a moment, she nodded. She pulled on a top, the same shade of grey as her underwear but thicker material. "We both needed the distraction. And it was pleasant enough, wasn't it?"

"Pleasant enough?" Carth inquired with a raised eyebrow. It seemed such a chilly dismissal.

She smiled fleetingly then. "You'd prefer marks out of ten? Some kind of written testimonial?"

Carth actually laughed, albeit briefly. As the laughter died, he watched her strap on a retractable wrist blade and test it a couple of times. The interplay of the strong, lean muscles in her arms was strangely fascinating to watch as the blade slid smoothly back and forth. "It doesn't have to mean absolutely nothing either, you know. Those aren't the only two possibilities."

"Uh-huh." She pulled her sleeve down to cover the blade. "Let's face it Valden, a few days from now, if we're not dead, we're going to go our separate ways and never see each other again. When it comes to it, we're not even on the same side, even if we're not enemies at the moment. Let's . . . just let's not complicate matters more than absolutely necessary, hey?"

He continued to look at her for several seconds as she finished the business of dressing, barely acknowledging he was even there. He'd hoped somehow that there might have been some change, but apparently not. "So you have some kind of off switch, huh? You can switch straight back to before, as if nothing ever happened?"

He thought she was going to ignore him, as she didn't answer for several seconds. Finally, she turned round and faced him again. Met his gaze directly. "If I didn't have an off switch, as you put it, I'd never have made it away from Nar Shaddaa. If you want to survive all this, you need to grow an off switch too."

He folded his arms.

She sighed. "It's not like I even know a single concrete thing about you." As he opened his mouth, she carried on over the top of him. "And no, Valden, that wasn't a request to know more. I think it's better this way, don't you? All things considered."

She pushed away from the sink behind her, striding past him and back into the bedroom.

"All things considered," Carth echoed quietly to the empty room. He looked at his reflection in the mirror – an unshaven, rather disreputable looking stranger with bloodshot eyes. "I thought maybe it might help if we could take an extra step. Try to trust each other perhaps." His reflection almost seemed to be mocking him. _Yeah, because you're so the expert on trust._

He heard her exhale and mutter something beneath her breath. "Just get showered and cleaned up, Valden. The Catcher hasn't stopped. Just because we shared a bed for a night, the Catcher hasn't stopped."

Finally, he did as he was told.

Half an hour later, the two of them were sitting in Dr. Fleg'manus's rather spacious and well-appointed office, watching the Carosite as he fiddled with a holo-terminal.

Tall and long-necked, the short fur of his long muzzle showing grey, Fleg'manus had an air of distracted irritation about him, long, agile fingers and double-opposable thumbs flickering across a key pad almost too rapidly for the eye to follow. "My apologies." The gruff voice, with its thickly accented Basic, indicated that, despite the words, any apologies present were purely notional. "Normally one of my assistants would take care of this sort of thing." He shot an irritated look towards Yolanda, now with her blond wig restored, as he said this. "But since your stipulations indicated the need for secrecy . . ."

"We really do appreciate you going out of your way for us, Doctor," Carth told him, covering up a sigh. And boy, was he making sure they knew just how far he was going out of his way.

The Carosite made a strange low sound that might have conveyed exasperation, irritation or any number of other negative emotions. Then, finally, the holo-terminal flickered to life. Part of Carth couldn't help but wonder if the whole show of messing about hadn't been a put on, designed to pass some of the Doctor's irritation back to its source.

Floating above the terminal was a three-dimensional image, which put Carth in mind of a convoluted star map. _Star Map_, he thought with a grimace. That wasn't in any way or shape getting old. Blinking, his eyes refocused slightly and he saw it was a diagrammatic representation of what, to his eyes, looked to be an extraordinarily complex molecular structure. "What exactly are we looking at here?"

"This?" Fleg'manus seemed slightly taken aback that Carth would even need to ask. "This shows the stable form of the chemical formula you asked me to process. Its structure at an atomic level."

"What does it do?" Yolanda asked, quiet but firm.

"Do?" Fleg'manus inquired. His head swung round on his long neck to focus on her. "It's a molecule. You were hoping it would perform tricks?"

"What might you use this substance for?" Clipped and icy this time.

Another strange, low noise like before. Definitely irritation, Carth thought. There was an unmistakeable undertone of, _just who are these uneducated Gamorreans. _He was sure it wasn't purely a product of his own imagination. "I was about to explain," Fleg'manus said shortly. "If you would allow me that opportunity."

Yolanda simply smiled at him broadly. "Thank you Doctor. In layman's terms if possible. Neither of us is remotely as knowledgeable in this area as your good self."

Dr. Fleg'manus blinked, eyeballs rolling in a manner Carth couldn't help but equate with a long-suffering sigh. _Give me strength_, or the like. "In layman's terms, the substance does absolutely nothing. Is that simple enough for you to fully understand?"

Silence stretched out.

"Perhaps in slightly less simple terms than that, Doctor," Carth finally managed.

A low rumbling seemed to pass up the considerable length of the Carosite's neck. "Very well. There are certain signature structures in the substance that are familiar to me from particular bio-weapons I have been given to study on the Republic's behalf. But the molecule itself seems to have been designed to break down rapidly and completely, leaving no discernable trace of itself behind."

Carth stared at him. "Wouldn't that be very bad? I mean, a bio-weapon that is effectively undetectable, if that's what you're saying . . .?"

There was the eye-rolling blink thing again. "If you'd listen rather than talk for a moment, _please_. The 'break down rapidly and completely' part of what I said is of key significance. In any species that this substance is theoretically capable of harming, it would break down within the circulatory system before it had the chance to actually do any harm. And this is a specifically designed behaviour. See the bondings here, here and here? That can only be intentional." A head swung to peer at each of them in turn. "In its current state, this is a very complex substance designed to do nothing at all in a very complex way."

"You say current state," Yolanda was saying. "That seems to imply other possible states."

Carth was barely paying attention. There was an uncomfortable tightness in his gut. He'd been sure that this must be something important. Absolutely positive. But, then, he only had _her_ word on any of this. He shot Yolanda a sudden, sidelong look. If somehow she'd known all along he was eavesdropping . . .

Fleg'manus was making a dismissive waving gesture with one of his rather odd-looking hands. "A figure of speech. I'm not used to translating into _layman_, as you put it. I was perhaps a little imprecise."

An idea occurred, more vain hope if he was honest. "When you say it does nothing, could you be missing something?" He groped around for what he meant. "Could it be doing something that you either couldn't detect or weren't looking for?"

The expression on the Carosite's face suggested that Carth had just accused him of something akin to cooking and eating his own children. "Such as?" The sarcasm invested in those two words was off the scale. _Tell me my job, little man_.

"Could it, for example, be destroying midichlorians? Could the break-down process you're witnessing be this happening?"

There was a rather impressive snorting noise. "Mr. Mayer, midichlorians are an entirely theoretical concept that has yet to gain general acceptance by the wider scientific community. One shouldn't put too much stock in sensationalist holoNet documentaries and the mumblings of eccentric religious orders."

Carth was aware that Yolanda was watching him closely, and from the way she shifted suddenly in her seat, he got the distinct impression that she'd suddenly made a big connection in her head there. That she now knew exactly why he was asking the question.

Her face gave nothing away. He cleared his throat. "Hypothetically speaking, if midichlorians were to exist . . ."

Another snort that seemed to pass the entire length of his considerable muzzle, gaining volume the entire way. "No Mr. Mayer. The theories so far put forward would imply the presence of midichlorians in every living cell. This substance breaks down almost immediately within the circulatory system. If it were killing midichlorians, it would only be doing so to a very small fraction of them before it ceased to become effective. Besides, there is nothing about the structure here that even remotely suggests such a thing."

_And you're absolutely certain of that_, Carth wanted to press, but didn't. He knew full well what kind of response he'd get.

Yolanda spoke up abruptly, catching him slightly by surprise. "In the same document where we found this formula, there were a number of what we believe to be genetic code sequences. Could these be used to alter the formula in some way? To tailor it, perhaps?"

Dr Fleg'manus did the equivalent of sitting back hard, neck straightening and jerking upwards to increase his effective height by several inches. "Why didn't you disclose this at the beginning? If you want me to perform an effective analysis, I require _all_ pertinent information available. As it is, all you've managed to do is waste my time and yours."

Carth shot Yolanda a sidelong look. "Tell me, am I being particularly slow here . . .?"

That same snorting noise came from Dr Fleg'manus again, also accompanied by the eye roll thing this time. "What I believe your companion is suggesting, Mr. Mayer, is that this substance in front of us is the base for a bio-weapon designed to undetectably target specific individuals while leaving all around them completely unharmed. An interesting theory, which I am not in any position to either confirm or refute."

As Carth attempted to digest this and work out how it affected everything he'd three-quarters convinced himself that he'd worked out, Dr. Fleg'manus's desk comm beeped.

"Please, excuse me." Not bothering to wait for a response, the Carosite turned his back on them.

There was a rapid, muttered conferral, from which Carth failed to pick out anything much apart from the words: 'Yes, they were just about to leave. You're very welcome to them.' Then Fleg'manus severed the link and looked back at them.

"That was my colleague, Dr. Ellas," he explained. "For some reason, he was very eager to speak to you, Mr. Mayer." The Carosite's tone of voice strongly suggested that he couldn't begin to fathom how that was even a possibility. "It sounded particularly urgent. I suggest that you don't keep him waiting."

That said, he gestured rather pointedly towards the door.

-

"I remember you telling me, fairly recently, that you had stopped dancing a long time ago."

Yuthura didn't immediately acknowledge the source of those words. Instead, she inclined her head towards the man standing opposite her, across the practise mat. Her breath was still coming hard and fast.

His name was Ranis Sansiki. He was tall and lean to the point of gauntness, and with his balding head and slightly rounded looking shoulders, he had more the look of a librarian than a warrior. In some ways that wasn't so far from the truth, Ranis acting as both chronicler and poet to the Echani troupe she now commanded. In other respects, though, it was about as misleading an impression as it was possible to form.

Ranis was also the Echani's combat instructor – a martial artist of extraordinary skill – and Yuthura couldn't help but think that if she'd faced him instead of Gare in their absurd little duel, she would not now be in this position at all. He inclined his head smoothly to match her gesture exactly.

At least he too was breathing hard from the sparring. That was somewhat mollifying. She picked up a towel, using it to wipe the sweat from her face and head tails. "Thank you, Ranis," she said once her breathing was back under control again.

He inclined his head again. "A genuine pleasure." And the words were actually sincere, so far as she could tell. "It isn't often that an employer of ours shows any interest in our ways." There was a subtle frown as he said this. From their earlier conversations, Yuthura had formed the definite impression that most of the Echani themselves no longer showed as much interest in those ways as Ranis thought proper.

Only then, finally, did she turn and face Jolee. She arched one smooth brow inquiringly, not saying anything.

"I don't think you were being entirely honest with me," he said.

Again, she didn't reply, wiping her hands carefully on the towel before stowing it away. Inwardly she was trying to work out what purpose lay beneath the words – what he actually wanted with her.

"I was just passing." He answered the question before she put voice to it. "We're due to drop out of hyperspace in about five minutes time. I thought I'd see if you might like to walk with me to the bridge? Unless you're embarrassed to be seen with an old man?"

"Not nearly so old as you try to make out sometimes," she murmured, falling into step with him.

"Hey, girl? Did you say something? You'll have to speak up a bit."

And that didn't fool her for even a moment, obvious and deliberate self-parody. "No, I didn't say anything," she said, more loudly this time, playing along.

Funny really. Every minute of the past thirty hours had seemed, at the time, to last an hour in its own right. Yet now that the time was gone . . . it scarcely seemed to have existed at all. _Too fast. Much too fast._ And she was left with a feeling inside her chest that she couldn't imagine being worse if she was walking to face her own execution.

Glancing at Jolee sidelong, she finally allowed herself to respond to his opening probes. Easier than certain other questions by far. "Dance and combat have certain commonalities. In the core skills that underpin both disciplines, at least. But that is as far as it goes." She shook her head. "To a Twi'lek, it has a spiritual aspect beyond the simple physical. The Great Dance. All existence." She couldn't entirely stop the bitter twist that played across her lips then. "It is a religion as sure as any faith in the Force. That faith shattered within me a long time ago."

"Ah," he said quietly. "Faith is an interesting mistress."

Yuthura bared her teeth, slightly surprised by the intensity of what she suddenly felt. "Faith is a vicious bitch who keeps us slave and prisoner."

"My chains shall be broken?" he suggested after a short pause.

"The Force shall free me," she echoed. She wasn't sure if she was smiling or grimacing. She could feel her lekku twisting in agitation. "There was a time when that spoke _very_ clearly to me. It is a lie of course. Or at least, no more than half the truth. Where it frees with one hand it simultaneously binds you with another."

"And that rankles?"

"Not like it once did."

For a moment, they both fell silent, simply walking. In its upper levels, the corridors of the _Rancorous_ were broad enough to accommodate a grav-sled flanked by a full retinue of guards. The light was orange, warm and oddly flame-like. Evenly spaced alcoves and archways created areas of deep shadow – far from a practical design for a starship.

"You think you're going to lose him, don't you?" he said after a while.

She didn't ask what Jolee meant. She knew well enough. Tamar. "I don't own him. He's not mine to lose, anymore than I am his."

"You know very well what I mean, girl."

They reached the main turbo-lift. She hit the control to summon it, before glancing at Jolee curiously. "You act differently with me than the others, you know that?" He was much more sparing with the senile old coot act, for one thing. Of course, he still did it, but there were times like now when he appeared to forget.

He snorted, apparently readying to launch back into the act. He stopped though, letting a breath out abruptly. "Sometimes it's useful. Sometimes not. You kind of get a feel for it."

"I make you uncomfortable somehow, I think," she said after a short while. "You're worried I might fall back? You think I might end up dragging him back with me too?"

He snorted more loudly this time. "Don't flatter yourself, girly. Takes more than some slip of a Twi'lek lass to get me worried. I've seen things that would make your hair curl." A brief pause as he looked at her. "If you had any, of course."

She kept on looking at him coolly. The lift arrived, opening with a pneumatic hiss. They stepped forward together, into a space the size of a small cargo bay on a human designed vessel. "You once told me that I reminded you of someone. Who did you mean?"

"Hmm?" The lift doors closed. Jolee scanned the controls rather more intently than there complexity merited. "No, I really don't think I did." He shot her an accusing look. "You're just making that up to make an old man think he's going senile, aren't you? Very cruel."

There was a subtle shifting sensation; a small change in acceleration forces. They'd made the jump out of hyperspace, and very smoothly too by the feel of it. Yuthura felt something clench inside her, but she forced the sensation away, leaning across Jolee and selecting the button for bridge. After a fraction of a second's delay, the lift whirred into life.

As she stepped back, Jolee sighed abruptly – almost resigned. "Did Tamar ever tell you about Nayama?"

After a moment, Yuthura shook her head. "He tends to keep other people's confidences."

"Considerate of him," he murmured. Eventually he added, "Nayama was my wife."

Yuthura looked at him sidelong. His gaze seemed to be off somewhere miles away. "She was a Twi'lek?" But she knew even before she asked that that wasn't what he'd meant by reminded.

He shook his head. She could tell he was somewhere deep in painful memories. "I didn't mean you reminded me of her physically." Suddenly though, a slow smile spread across his lips and the pain seemed to drop away. "Although she did have this way of moving . . .. It was quite something to see."

Yuthura looked away and snorted. Suddenly she was sure that this wasn't something she truly wanted to hear. Something too personal and intimate, which she was no good at all at dealing with.

Jolee's smile faded. "You're very different people, but occasionally the mind plays little tricks . . . Little things . . ." He trailed off.

The lift stooped, the doors sliding open.

Jolee was looking hard at her again. "Very cleverly diverted from my question, by the way. Someone might almost mistake you for a Jedi."

Another snort, covering a brief, uncomfortable pang of . . . of something. Regret perhaps? It seemed like half a lifetime ago that she'd stood before the Jedi Council on Coruscant and asked to be readmitted to the Order. Now, she was no longer entirely sure that she'd even ask the question in the same position. So much had changed. So much about her self-perception had changed.

How much of it was for the better, she couldn't say.

Tamar was standing with his back to them, halfway across the bridge, staring out of the viewscreen at the sparse backdrop of faint stars. He hadn't looked round at their arrival; hadn't acknowledged it in any way at all.

As she looked at him, she could feel the Force flowing around him in subtle ebbs and flows. His consciousness was obviously somewhere far removed from here, and as she concentrated on him more intently, she felt her awareness shift. He almost seemed to shine then, the normally tightly contained core of power he held deep within him now breaking through to the surface in a way she hadn't seen before.

Part of her wondered what he might be able to do if he ever let himself tap fully into that power. On different levels, the idea was both strangely seductive and deeply scary all at once.

She pushed the thought away as she continued to stare at him. Something – a thread of Force, almost like an umbilicus – emerged from that core, connecting him to something distant that she couldn't sense.

_Bastila Shan_. A name she had heard a lot about, and someone she found herself thinking of more and more. Someone she couldn't help resenting, no matter how small minded and petty that was, and no matter how much she tried not to.

_Stupid to dislike someone you haven't even met._ A self-mocking smile touched her lips, but vanished quickly. _Stupid to feel so jealous._

_You think you're going to lose him, don't you?_ Jolee's words echoed, but they weren't, she thought, quite the truth of it. She'd always known that they would lose each other, inevitably. At least in that way. It was just . . . just that she wanted more time. A bit more time.

The grimace lasted longer than the smile.

"There are other kinds of bonds to those of the Force," Jolee murmured from beside her, making her jolt. "Some might say those are the important kind."

She didn't say anything. A visible shudder passed up Tamar's back, and the sense of Force flowing around him cut off. The thread died away, at least from her perceptions, but she knew it remained nonetheless.

He gestured towards one of the tactical stations, and she could tell from the nuances of his movements that his mind still wasn't focused on the here and now. "Ready the pre-programmed sequence. Target is . . ." He reeled off a rapid fire string of coordinates that, as far as Yuthura could tell, pinpointed an empty patch of space a few hundred kilometres directly in front of their position.

"Sir," came the acknowledgement.

"Fire."

She didn't really see the complex series of detonations. Her attention was focused on the Force rather than anything her eyes were showing her. Tamar was reaching out again, grasping hold of something that the overlapping patterns of detonations briefly outlined, and manipulating it with his will.

At first she couldn't tell what it actually was he manipulated, but then it . . . blossomed. That was the only word she could think of to describe it, the fabric of the Force swelling suddenly and flowering outwards in a graceful, spreading circular ripple.

A gate. A door.

A wormhole, her eyes informed her as the Force sense faded, and her other physical senses resumed control. A gaping throat of darkness, hanging in front of them.

And beyond it, something waited.

-

"Might I remind you that the Jedi Order has maintained its independence from Senate jurisdiction for nigh on a thousand years?" Ulthor Bey'lesk's voice was a low grumble. The elderly, grey-furred Bothan peered round the chamber at his fellow Jedi Masters as though to emphasise his words.

Or perhaps, Quatra thought sourly, given how myopic he'd become over the years, he was just checking to make sure that he still had an audience.

"I think everyone here is fully aware of this fact." Mida Tapawan's immediate response was thin and reedy. And, as was its want in recent times, uncomfortably shrill.

Quatra stifled a weary sigh. _Is this what it has come to? This Grand Council of Masters._

_Grand Council_. If ever two words had been designed to mock, then surely it must be those. They didn't even occupy the old formal Council chambers, where such gatherings had always been conducted in the past. That had been one thing they had at least all been able to agree upon. The demise of the old Council there had left a lingering echo on the Force, and seemed to have permeated the very walls of the structure. It was now a _very_ disturbing place to be, and not remotely somewhere to conduct calm and measured business.

And that, right at the supposed heart of the Order's strength.

So instead, they had gathered in the largest of the Temple's lecture auditoriums, where, more usually, apprentices or Padawans would assemble to be taught. Although any given gathering of Padawans was likely to display more accumulated wisdom than was currently on view, she couldn't help but think.

"Do you, Master Tapawan?" Ulthor inquired with bare politeness. "Do you honestly? While everyone here may very well be aware on a purely factual level, the attitudes I am seeing from so many of our number regrettably suggest that they have forgotten entirely the deeper truths of the matter."

Quatra stifled another sigh. For all that she understood Ulthor's point of view, and even agreed with it, he could have phrased it in a less deliberately patronising tone.

She looked around the auditorium, bright sunlight spilling through the transparisteel panels of the ceiling, and felt something that wasn't entirely removed from despair. A Grand Council, where supposedly every Jedi Master in the Order was required to be in attendance. In practise, of course, given the timescales involved in its calling, some had simply not received the message in time, or were engaged in business too critical to pull away from. Perhaps some too had simply ignored the call entirely. Quatra couldn't deny she had felt that temptation when the summons first came to her. But even allowing for the fact that maybe as many as a third of their number were absent, the relative sparseness of the gathering was . . . disquieting.

"And what are those truths? That times and circumstances change, perhaps? That binding ourselves rigidly to traditions of the past for no better reason than that they are traditions, is in itself a blindness amounting to folly."

The speaker here was one of the younger Masters, newly appointed in the months after the battle of the Star Forge. Ta-Shakti, his name was. A Togruta. And while the words themselves were sensible enough, the stridency bordering on belligerence of his tone was not.

"But this is not just a simple matter of tradition, is it?" Marek Dawnlight, several seats along from Quatra's own position, put in before Ulthor could launch his own withering counter argument. "This is a fundamental tenet of our Order's entire reason for being. We work alongside the Republic in cooperation, but we _always_ retain our independence from it. That is crucial to what we are. Ask those of us who work along the Outer Rim upon worlds that are _not_ a part of the Republic's compass – worlds that do not necessarily trust the Galactic Senate to hold their best interests at heart – what impact might it have if we were suddenly, in perception, to become the Senate's foot soldiers. Our role as mediators and negotiators – as emissaries of peace – would be immediately and irrevocably undermined. What of us then, when we are regarded as no more than another branch of Republic law enforcement? Let us not speak of traditions here, when what is at stake is the entire meaning of our existence."

But if it were just their numbers – or rather lack of – that was at issue here, then that would have been entirely fine. From Quatra's viewpoint at least. No, the more telling problem was the entrenched divisions that she could sense, not even lurking beneath the surface anymore but openly on display.

She looked around at the faces, many of them belonging to people she had known for years, though just as many were new to her. There hadn't been a Grand Council of the Masters in almost forty years, since shortly after Exar Kun's defeat on Yavin. Back then, she'd been no more than an apprentice, but the results of that gathering had echoed profoundly down the years.

The entire nature of the Jedi had altered then, she had to acknowledge. In the years since, they'd become a more cloistered order, and yes, it was undeniable – they were now further removed from the galaxy at large than they'd once been. Aloof was not an accusation entirely without foundation. A determination had been made at that last Grand Council to alter the teaching methods of centuries. The Order had begun to actively seek out the Force sensitive at a much younger age so that they might grow to maturity already schooled in the ways and wisdom of the Force, removed from outside distractions and attachments. Profound changes to the Order's attitude to personal relationships had been enshrined. Even the Jedi Code itself had been subtly amended, the teaching of it becoming a far more formalised and tightly regulated thing. All to ensure that what had happened once, Jedi turning against Jedi, could never happen again.

_And what a success it has been_.

This gathering promised, in its way, to have just as momentous an impact, determining the Jedi Order's very path within the galaxy. If they didn't manage to sunder themselves in two in the process. The more that Quatra looked at those faces around her though, the more that latter possibility looked the likely outcome.

Even Revan and Malak had not managed to divide them so surely as they were divided today.

She found herself wishing then, for the presence of Vandar Tokare. His calm wisdom and serenity had always seemed to spread to those around him, bringing a sense of proportion to even the most dire of circumstances.

Hell, she thought, a thin smile touching thinner lips, she'd have settled for Vrook Lamar. Vrook at least, had been capable of banging heads together where necessary, forging consensus – even if half the time it was consensus against him – by sheer force of prickly personality.

Quatra realised then, her smile becoming self-mocking, that she was sitting there, watching and waiting for some one to take charge. _Just like half the rest of us_. She drew in a deep breath; opened her mouth to speak . . .

And was beaten to the punch.

"Your words do you credit, Marek," the female voice said smoothly, "but I can't help thinking you overstate the case here, and even risk the accusation of melodrama."

Quatra's gaze snapped round on the speaker. It was one of the holographic projections intermingled with their number. Traditional rules on Council members being gathered in person had, given the circumstances, been relaxed to allow for maximum participation.

"Melodrama, Leandra?" Marek responded, his tone carefully measured this time. "Perhaps so, but I think one of us at least has to ensure we are aware of the scale of the folly that is proposed here."

"More than one," Ulthor grumbled irritably, and there were several other murmurs of ascent from around the auditorium.

"But in overstating our concerns, we are in danger of allowing undeniably powerful emotions to sway our decisions." The hologram looked around the chamber, as if silently asking for reasonableness and calm. "It surely behoves us to address the matter before us in as measured a manner as possible, so that we do not risk acting out of fear. Because if we are honest, who among us here today does not hold at least some fear for what we discuss?" A pause for emphasis. "I know that I do."

Silence. Quatra studied the smooth holographic face of the woman. _Leandra Corva-Dey_. She'd known her back when they had both been Padawans together, though she hadn't immediately recognised her. But yes, now she could see the echo of the woman she'd once known there before her. In truth, Leandra had probably aged far better than she had, and the voice . . . it was difficult, in all honesty, to recall that voice.

Something niggled at her slightly though. Something off.

It was a moment before it came to her. She'd heard that Leandra was one of the prime motivators behind both the calling of this Grand Council, and the proposed deal with the Republic Senate that was now provoking such contention. Yet . . . she wasn't here in person?

"Look out of any window in this temple complex," Leandra was saying after another interjection from Marek that Quatra had missed in her distraction. "The Senate is within easy walking distance of us, visible for all to see. As far as most of the galaxy is concerned, we already stand together as twin pillars at the Republic's heart. And are not a large proportion of the problems now facing us down to the public's perception of our lack of accountability?"

"So you propose that we cede our independence entirely? We become simply another arm of the galactic legislature?" a Twi'lek Master, who Quatra couldn't immediately put a name to, suggested. The tightness of his face as he spoke made his disapproval clear enough, for all that his tone stayed resolutely neutral.

"No one is suggesting that at all," Ti-Shakti snapped back in obvious irritation.

"The Senate do not – and, in the end, cannot – have any true understanding of the nature of the Force. Simply as a practical matter, how can they be expected to legislate something they do not comprehend?" This was a female Zabrak. Calli Zen? No, Zen had died with Vandar and Vrook and all the others, Quatra reminded herself.

"Please," Leandra's voice held a kind of put upon patience. A schoolteacher dealing with a clutch of demanding toddlers, Quatra couldn't help but think, and almost smiled at the notion. The two of them had been friends at one time, she recollected. That seemed a very long time ago. "We need to try to maintain a measure of perspective here. The proposal under discussion does not for a moment suggest that we suddenly become an arm of the Senate's will. It does not propose that we give up thousands of years of tradition in a single shot. All it proposes is the introduction of a series of checks and balances, and that we be transparently accountable for the decisions we make."

That was the other nagging thing that troubled her about Leandra Corva-Dey – the reasons for their friendship's final dissolution. Time heals, she reminded herself inwardly. Sometimes even the worst looking wounds could scab over.

Or the most innocuous could fester.

"We already have a system of checks and balances. One that has grown out of the quiet wisdom of the Force and served us well for millennia. And everyone in this chamber today is most assuredly accountable for their every decision and action. It is insulting to suggest otherwise." Marek again.

An emotive subject, Quatra thought. But as Jedi, and Jedi Masters in particular, they were supposed to be beyond that emotion. And there, perhaps, was the most dangerous self-deception that they faced.

The holograph of Leandra inclined its head. "Insult was certainly not my intent." The smooth reasonableness of her tone managed to make Marek sound almost childish. "But from the perspective of the galaxy at large, we are accountable only to ourselves, and all the laws that bind us are of our own devising and enforcement. Let us face facts. The Republic's trust in us has broken down to such a level that we have to take visible and substantive steps if we are to have a hope of restoring it."

"And so we are to make ourselves accountable to Republic bean counters and lawyers? How then, do we even pretend to serve the will of the Force?" The Zabrak again. Vida Yart, Quatra saw as she glanced down at the seating plan. Another of the new ones, like Ti-Shakti.

"And we are forgetting that one of the prime purposes of our order is to act as balance and guide to the Senate. Not the other way around." Ulthor again, sounding crotchety. With Vandar's demise he was one of the oldest and most experienced of them left.

This was going to take a while.

"I acknowledge that this is a very difficult subject for us," Leandra turned and addressed the Bothan directly. "We all still have our pride don't we? Pride in what we are, and pride in our history. We are supposed to be above such pride, but that . . . that is difficult. Can we not acknowledge though, that we have sometimes made mistakes in our choices? Serious mistakes that have had profound consequences in the galaxy at large. Who here can truly say they have not questioned and agonised over our past choices, in matters of the Mandalorian war and Revan in particular?"

And there it was. All the nagging doubt crystallised to form a hard and solid lump.

This time Quatra did speak, almost without consciously thinking. "It is easy to talk of mistakes when one has for so long absented oneself from the decision making process entirely."

Leandra turned round and looked at her curiously. After a brief pause, a smile touched her lips. "Quatra. My old friend."

Those words – the way she said them – made something inside Quatra tighten. It almost seemed as if she had been . . . reminding herself? "Leandra," she managed. "It's been a long time, hasn't it? I thought you were done with the business of councils and us Jedi Masters."

Leandra had been promoted to masterhood several years ahead of Quatra, by that time the friendship of their early Padawan days faded to little more than old acquaintance. She had, so Quatra had heard, been a member of the Jedi Council that Revan had so fatefully gone before to petition for aid against the Mandalorians, and had been one of the few Masters to speak openly in favour of his position.

When the Council had forbidden Revan from taking action, she had apparently argued strenuously against the decision. Although she had not joined Revan's cause when he had disobeyed the Council's will – no one of Master level had, the schism confined to the ranks of Knights and Padawans – she had eventually resigned her position at the end of the Mandalorian war, leaving Coruscant behind to take on watchman duties somewhere on the outer rim.

And as far as Quatra knew, before these recent events, no one had heard a single word from her since.

"Anyone can change their mind, can't they Quatra?" Leandra was smiling. "I heard that even Jolee Bindo has returned to the order, and if he can let bygones be bygones, then surely so can I? Foolish to let individual differences of opinion divide us at such a crucial time."

Quatra inclined her head. Part of her wanted to ask why now was so much more urgent than when Malak and the infinite fleet had been driving the Republic to the brink of destruction. She kept her mouth shut though, realising how petty it would sound. Inside, the nagging doubts had increased rather than lessened.

"And where is the disagreeable old coot anyway?" a voice drawled. "No, not you Ulthor. Bindo I mean."

At this, a smattering of laughter passed around the auditorium, breaking through the uncomfortable edge of tension. Ulthor muttered something beneath his breath that didn't carry.

"He was assigned to keep watch on Revan," another voice answered. Quatra didn't look at the speaker, her attention still fixed upon the hologram of Leandra, striving to find something there to allay her sudden fears. "No one has heard from him in weeks."

_Bothan space, as of few days ago_, she thought distractedly, but didn't say, not caring to explain how she had that knowledge. Not now at least, in front of everyone. Silence spread around the chamber like a pall. Revan. The other great monkey they had sitting on their collective backs.

"The oracles tell us nothing still? The future continues to lie clouded from our sight?" Someone finally asked as the tension grew to near unbearable levels.

"Something blinds us, as it has for weeks now." Since the old Council's demise, the voice didn't add, but the meaning was clear enough to Quatra's ears. "There is a veiling shadow that makes seeing even the present difficult."

Leandra's expression hadn't so much as flickered in the past thirty seconds. _Why aren't you here in person?_

"We are letting ourselves be sidetracked from the matter in hand here." Mida Tapawan again. Quatra recognised the voice clearly.

_Why, Leandra?_

"Agreed." Marek and Vida Yart spoke together in stereo. After a second or so, Marek inclined his head and gestured, yielding the floor to Vida. "We still haven't heard any convincing argument as to why we need to renegotiate our relationship with the Senate," the Zabrak said. "They have always seen the wisdom of our current relationship, and they will see that again once they find a measure of calm. Right now it should be our goal to help guide them towards that calm rather than pandering to their whims."

"With respect," Mida Tapawan responded, voice rising in barely contained annoyance. "You have not been on Coruscant these past weeks, Vida. You have not seen the vehemence of opinion aimed against us, even from former staunch allies. If we do not show willingness to compromise, then change will be imposed on us. Make no mistake."

"Compromise?" Quatra heard Marek snort. "There is a difference between compromise and what is proposed today. We will of course, hear the Senate's concerns . . ."

"But we won't will we?" Leandra stood up again, Quatra still watching the woman's face closely. And the more she watched it, the more of a stranger's face it became. Leandra had never been so . . . reasonable. "Your tone of voice tells me you are quite categorically not hearing the Senate's concerns. Is it not better that we engage with them now, and make ourselves a part of this process, guiding its direction from within? Better, surely, than arraying ourselves against them, the very people we are supposed to serve and protect. Can we not admit to our imperfections and seek out ways to correct them? Have we no humility? I cannot see the future, Masters, but I do not have to, to know that it will be one we come to regret if we do not learn to bend before the prevailing wind."

The words passed Quatra by though. Something about this woman was wrong. Very wrong. She wondered how the others didn't sense it. It was more than simple nagging now.

Other voices entered the debate, taking them slowly round in circles. A lot was said, but Quatra didn't think that anyone was truly listening to each other anymore, if they ever had been at all. Her own attention began to drift until a subliminal vibration coming from the communicator in the pocket of her robes snapped her attention back. Proper etiquette said she should not even be carrying it in here.

She took it surreptitiously from her pocket and read the message that been sent to her.

It was from Belaya. She and Juhani would arrive on Coruscant in the next seven hours, ahead of schedule. There was a request for an immediate meeting in private, away from the Grand Jedi Temple. The implication was that the two of them were being followed.

-

"So, what do you want?" Carth barely managed even a veneer of politeness as he caught sight of the Caamasi, standing and waiting calmly in front of them with his arms folded, hands concealed by voluminous sleeves.

Dr Ellas's placid, blue-on-green eyes moved briefly past him to settle on Yolanda. He didn't raise any protest to her presence though, focusing quickly back on Carth. There was no preamble. "You have to leave this place. Quickly."

Carth felt his heart lurch and simply stared at him. He had the sense of Yolanda suddenly drifting away to one side, giving the appearance of doing it completely casually, but putting herself in a position to flank Ellas should the need arise. To take him unawares and slide her concealed blade through his ribcage.

He realised then that he hadn't said anything at all to her about the Caamasi – about him being a former Jedi, and perhaps a powerful one. _The one who built Darth Revan's new identity._ Then again, he hadn't told her anything at all that was true about himself either. So much for the idea of trust that he'd mentioned earlier. Suddenly, the urge to open up – for some level of honesty in their interaction – was a powerful one.

He shook his head, shoving the idiocy away – struggling to concentrate. "What are you talking about?"

"The Dark Jedi pursuing you both is very close. He will arrive at Kamari Station within the next few hours. I would advise against you being here when that happens."

The words, serene and unruffled though they were, acted like a kick to the gut. He struggled to draw enough breath to make his voice work. "How the hell do you know about that?"

Ellas tilted his head fractionally to one side. If Ellas was human, Carth would have interpreted the expression on his face as perplexed, but he suspected those eyes could be misleading. "I saw your reaction to the news about the _Sunrider_. And I saw then the link that was tied to you through the Force."

"And you didn't say anything?"

"You didn't seem inclined to extend our conversation." There was a noticeable pause as he obviously substituted a word just before he voiced it. "Valden."

Carth grunted, conceding the point. A glance across at Yolanda showed that her attention was fixed very firmly on Ellas. The fact that he'd revealed himself as a Force adept didn't seem to have altered her intent at all.

"Unfortunately it was beyond my ability to sever the connection." A short, ruminating pause. "Not without considerable further study, at least. The best I could manage in the circumstances was to shield you for a time. I hope, at least, that it gained you one night of trouble free sleep?"

Carth felt his cheeks start to heat at that, and was grateful when Yolanda jumped in as he groped for a response.

"If you were shielding Valden, how exactly did _he_ find us?" There was a dangerous edge to her voice, and she'd drifted closer to Ellas, now in almost perfect position to deliver a rapid killing strike.

Ellas spread his hands. "Perhaps we should walk as well as talk, do you not think?"

"Perhaps you should answer the question first," came her immediate retort.

Ellas folded his hands again. "An error of judgment on my part, it seems." To Carth, the Caamasi sounded both apologetic and slightly embarrassed. _Glad I'm not the only one._ "Your Dark Jedi . . . acquaintance seems to have been able to detect and home in on my efforts at shielding you. Rather than hiding you from him as I'd hoped, I may have inadvertently led him straight to you."

Yolanda swore concisely beneath her breath. For a moment Carth was afraid she was going to attack Ellas anyway, something clenching inside him as he prepared to intercede. Then she started walking rapidly, back towards the quarters they'd been assigned.

Carth fell into step with her, struggling to conceal his relief. Ellas kept pace alongside them with ease, though he seemed to glide as much as walk.

"I suspect your pursuer already knows the identity of the vessel you arrived on, so I have made arrangements for another ship." Ellas was holding a data-scrip out to him, and Carth accepted it numbly.

He heard Yolanda snort with abortive, bitter-edged laughter. "Most generous of you."

"I never acquired more than the most minimal of competence with a lightsaber." Ellas's tone as he continued was politely conversational, seemingly oblivious to her mood. "And I was always more interested in the healing and scholarly applications of the Force. I still have one or two tricks at my disposal though. I should, at the least, be able to provide you with a decent head start."

Carth stopped abruptly in his tracks. He let the data scrip slide between his fingers, then trod on it deliberately as it hit the floor. A mixed group of Duros, Ugnaughts and Ryloshi fell silent as they walked past in the opposite direction, necks craning in curiosity.

Ellas gestured vaguely in their direction. "Carry on," he mouthed. Immediately they resumed their conversation as if it had never paused, seeming to have lost any interest they had.

"Valden," he started carefully once they'd gone. "I really think . . ."

"We're not running," Carth stated flatly.

Ellas blinked in a way that made him look somehow puzzled. "I think the Republic has more use for you and the information you carry than it does for a fallen Jedi well past his prime." There was a note of reproach in amongst the words.

_And what, precisely, do you know about the information I carry?_ Carth bit down on the words though, trying to stay calm and measured. Failing. The Catcher's face lurked somewhere behind his eyes, grinning tauntingly. "You know about what happened to the _Sunrider_. That didn't happen because this Dark Jedi thought he was destroying me. It happened because he found I wasn't there. Punishment and message together. If I run, he'll do exactly the same thing here."

And here there were millions of people. Not thousands.

He heard Yolanda's breath hiss between her teeth in obvious annoyance, but didn't look at her. "And on top of that there's someone I have an obligation to. Someone I abandoned once. Someone I won't abandon a second time."

"Valden!" Yolanda's voice was sharp.

He didn't look at her. "This is _nothing_ to do with you. Leave. Take the ship Dr Ellas arranged for us and get away from here." His gaze dropped involuntarily to the data scrip he'd just crushed. _Yeah, that was clever._ Then he added, much more softly, "Please."

Ellas still hadn't said anything. The intensity with which he was looking at Carth made him profoundly uncomfortable, sure that the Caamasi was seeing far more than simply the surface.

"Love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy, hey Valden?" The words dripped acid. For all that Carth could see their carefully calculated intent, they still made him flinch. He managed to keep himself from responding though.

Ellas's ears twitched, fur rippling softly. "And there I was, serene in my decision of self-sacrifice. I am not an especially brave man, but . . . so simple, I thought." The soft sound that emerged was oddly wistful. "What then, do you suggest instead, Valden?"

He just stared at Ellas, trying to work out if he could or even should trust him. This man who, if his words were to be believed, had helped to reshape and rebuild Revan's memories. He took a deep breath. On top of everything else, this made him someone he absolutely couldn't afford to let the Catcher catch. "What I suggest, is that the two of us go and meet him. Just like you planned to do alone. And then . . ." Something in Carth's voice turned utterly cold. "Then we kill him."

Their eyes remained locked silently together for what seemed like a long time. He could tell that the Caamasi was deeply troubled.

He had enough problems of his own.

Finally Yolanda made a loud and rather rude noise, breaking the silence that had settled in. "You know Valden, it almost seems impossible, but I think I actually managed to overestimate your intelligence. And since I had you down as being barely more sentient than a wroshyr wood door knob, that's quite some going."

Carth turned slowly and glared at her. "What?"

"Your inability to count beyond two, for starters. There are three of us here."

Briefly his eyes screwed shut. But he recognised that expression – ghosts of it at least – from Morgana. There would be no shifting of ground. No retreat. "Three," he agreed quietly, suddenly feeling sick.

"We had best get moving then, if we are to prepare." Ellas stated quietly. "We don't have long."

-

He was being watched.

Tamar had been able to sense that the ship was alive from the moment their shuttle had passed through the wormhole mouth. Now that they were inside that vast, darkly gleaming vessel, the intensity of the sensation had increased approximately a thousand fold. It was something different to the Star Forge. There, he had sensed a vast, crushingly powerful, but completely impersonal dark presence all around him. It fed upon the violence and death he brought with him, but was utterly indifferent to its outcome. Here though . . . here he got the sense of something active and intent, and most of all, aware of them, scrutinising their every forward step.

Scrutinising him.

That was the part that truly made his flesh crawl. The sense that the ship was watching him specifically. Watching him because it recognised him. Because it knew him.

From what Bastila had told him across the bond, it should not have come as a surprise. Perhaps, he thought, that impression of being recognised was simply a projection of his own imagination – his sense of reality warping to fit with his expectations.

His head was pounding. It felt almost like all the millions of tons of surrounding metal were pressing in on him directly. Walking silently at his side, he could sense the tightly drawn tension in Yuthura too.

He'd wanted her to remain back on the _Rancorous_. No sense in risking more of them than necessary inside the wormhole, and someone to pull them out if it collapsed, or something else went wrong. That was the surface reasoning at least. One look at her expression – the way her lekku were held – had made his jaw snap shut on that suggestion though. So Jolee had stayed behind instead.

Their footsteps echoed. Everything around them was silent and still. Somehow, that made the tension worse.

Bastila was somewhere very close now. For all that she was currently blocking him out as firmly as she could manage, he could tell that much.

His mouth was dry. Over the past few days, the two of them had probably spent more time communicating across their shared bond than in all their previous time of knowing one another. Yet not a single word spoken had been anything but business: about Malefic and the Living Fleet, the hyperspace pocket, the wormhole, and how it could be opened. He'd felt the underlying turmoil in her – anger and fear mixed in with a myriad of other emotions – for all that she'd sought to guard that part of herself from him. From herself, too, maybe.

Force knew what she'd sensed from in turn. He suspected though, that it was something very different from the calm reassurance he'd been consciously trying to impart.

That was the dark side of the bond. That no matter how much you might want it, you could never be entirely alone in your own head, the one critical freedom everyone else took for granted utterly denied to you. And you could never, ever – no matter what discipline you possessed – control entirely what leaked through.

So while there had been a truly horrendous sense of loss when they had agreed to part – to block off the bond as firmly as they could manage and let it wither and die with time and distance – there had had also been the sweetest, most powerful relief. A sense of freedom, which permeated through the pangs of withdrawal from that unbearable addiction.

It seemed, though, that it was not something you could escape quite so easily.

They reached a doorway, stopping briefly – him, Yuthura, plus a half dozen of the Echani mercenaries. Bastila stood the other side of it. At this proximity, the sense of her was just as strong as his sense of the ship.

He paused and glanced across at Yuthura. Their eyes met, but neither of them said anything.

They should have said something prior to now. He should have said something; something more than he had already. There'd been so many other distractions and things to steal the attention, but that wasn't in the end a remotely good excuse. Above all, he shouldn't have let himself believe her simple assurance of understanding simply because it had been the most convenient thing for him to hear.

Now though, there was no time. Her mouth twitched; bared sharp white teeth. It wasn't quite a smile. It wasn't quite reassuring either.

He stepped forward. The door opened, and they walked on through.

His eyes moved immediately to where Bastila stood. That was another thing about a bond like the one they shared. At this range, you always knew exactly where the other person was, whether you wanted to or not. There was no hiding.

Which was why he'd been ever so slightly surprised that she wasn't there waiting for them when their shuttle had landed. For some reason though, she'd made them come this extra distance to meet her. Her back was turned to him now, the hood of her Jedi robes pulled up as she stood, apparently gazing out of a viewport at the empty void that lay beyond.

She didn't look round, or say anything.

That first move would be left to him. He thought he understood that wish – that desire for a modicum of control, however small – and cleared his throat, opening his mouth to greet her.

Canderous beat him to it. "I'm disappointed in you, Revan. Keeping company with this bunch of posing Echani dandies. I thought you had better taste than that. Don't you have any _real_ men to follow you?"

A hint of a smile touched Tamar's lips, the edge of the tension in him breaking slightly. _So familiar._ He looked back round, realising that, with the amount of his attention consumed by Bastila, he hadn't registered anyone else there as more than an outline – a body occupying space.

That smile faded as he finally saw Canderous properly; his heavy armour, dull and charred, a deep rent across the chest plate that had obviously been inflicted by a lightsaber. It was his right arm though – or rather, the lack of it – that drew his attention most.

He forced himself to lift his gaze to that granite fist of a face and spoke lightly, as if he'd seen nothing out of the ordinary at all. "Well, I don't notice you bringing any warriors to my cause."

There was a noticeable pause, Canderous's expression becoming oddly fixed. After a moment one cheek twitched, the corner of his mouth turning up in dry amusement. "Perhaps if you'd asked nicely, I would have done."

"I'll bear that in mind," Tamar answered quietly. "And maybe one day take you up on that." He realised as he spoke that the words were no longer being said in jest at all, absolutely deadly serious.

From the look in his eyes – surprised, then wary – he saw that Canderous had just realised it too. His expression became almost . . . introspective? That was as far as Tamar could read it, at any rate. "You've changed, Tamar," he said then, voice uncharacteristically muted.

It wasn't often that Canderous called him anything but Revan. After a slightly uneasy moment, Tamar cracked another smile, nodding towards the Mandalorian's missing arm. "Not nearly as much as you, I see."

Canderous smirked in turn. "Remember the choices you gave me, the last time we parted?"

"Those weren't choices. They were suggestions. And you did ask for my opinion."

"That I did." He waved Tamar's quibbling away. "Anyway, I decided after our conversation that I should stay like you suggested. Give the Princess here a hand."

There was a moment of perfect silence. Mutual recognition at just how bad a joke it was. Then, simultaneously, they started laughing, loud and uproarious, the sound echoing off the ribbed chamber's walls. It wasn't so much humour as a kind of relief. Tamar was aware that the others were staring at the two of them in nonplussed bemusement, but didn't really care.

As the laughter started to die away Bastila's snort cut through it piercingly.

"Good to see you again, Canderous." Tamar inclined his head.

"You too, Tamar." A dry chuckle. "Better than the alternatives at least."

Bastila walked between them then, her step ragged. She stopped close to Canderous's side. Suddenly she consumed Tamar's full attention again, everything else sliding into the background. He barely needed the Force bond to sense the seething impatience in her. The nervous intensity.

And he knew then too that the decision to stand so near to Canderous was a very deliberate one, designed to send a message. Just like making them come this short distance to meet her had been.

She pulled her hood back and looked straight at him. He found himself staring. She looked very different to how he remembered. And it wasn't just her hair, now cropped almost brutally short in a way that seemed to change the entire look of her face. Older, he decided. She looked much older – someone who now understood a lot more about the universe, although that newfound understanding didn't appear to have brought with it any happiness.

"Hello Bastila," he said, aware that he'd stayed quiet for too long.

Something in her eyes seemed to tighten. _Were even those two simple words the wrong ones?_

"Tamar," she responded at length. Her voice was that of a stranger.

From Yuthura he sensed a kind of watchful and darkly cynical amusement. He took a deep breath, trying to salvage something. "Shall we get out of here then? I don't know about you, but I don't have much desire to linger here any longer than we have to."

-

"Ah. So it is a trap." Morrigance heard Quatra sigh softly. She didn't sound altogether surprised. "Yes, I suppose that the caution contained in Belaya's communication was slightly out of character. I tried to work that out of her, you know, but never quite successfully. She still has a tendency to charge on in, and subtlety be damned." A tiny pause. Morrigance could feel the woman probing at her with the Force as she spoke. Those probes bounced off, encountering walls of ablative armour. "Juhani too for that matter." A dry, inward directed smile touched the woman's lips. "And me as well, it would seem. Perhaps, in the end, you teach more of yourself than you intend to."

Morrigance took a step forward, out of the shade of the trees she was standing under. This corner of the park was oddly quiet. The sun had disappeared behind the surrounding mega-skyscrapers many minutes ago, and down at this level twilight was closing in. The files of traffic high above seemed to belong to an entirely different world.

She touched the side of her featureless mirror mask, a hologram flickering to life over the top of it. "Quatra. My old friend."

Across the clearing from her, Quatra's expression became tight and flinty. "You are not Leandra."

"I knew her though, very briefly." Still wearing Leandra's face, Morrigance fashioned a warm and friendly smile. "After Revan claimed the title of Dark Lord, she came to find him – to try and persuade him back from his chosen course."

Quatra flinched; exhaled softly. "And Revan killed her for her troubles."

Morrigance shook her head. "No, Leandra never got as far as Revan. I had my job, and did it."

The Jedi Master stared at her. "You're her. The Sith Lord. The woman Revan mentioned in his interrogation transcripts. You never left here at all, which is why no one has been able to find a trace of your existence."

In answer, Morrigance simply made the holographic face smile more broadly.

"And now you wear the title Darth. I hope you are enjoying it, but from what I hear it is a bitter thing to bear."

The smile faded slightly. Morrigance continued to walk forward, slow and stately, closing the gap between them. "I have never been one for titles, and I make no claims at all on that one in particular. Leave it for other fools to fight over."

She saw something flicker in Quatra's eyes – something harden. "And now you're going to kill me. Like you killed the Jedi Council."

Morrigance stopped. There was still a gap of about six metres between them. "I made sure everyone who knew Leandra well during the latter period of her life was . . . indisposed. You were something of a borderline case, however, and in the end I decided to take a risk. That was a mistake, I acknowledge. Your mistake was in not concealing your reactions."

"None of us are really behaving like Jedi anymore, are we? I think we're scared of having lost so much control, but being Jedi, we can't allow ourselves to admit that. We need to relearn humility."

Morrigance simply shrugged. She decided it would be best not to allow herself to be drawn into a conversation on her views about the Jedi Order.

"As do you, I think. You had to see me to my fate in person, didn't you? Does death bring you that much pleasure?" Suddenly Quatra's lightsabers were in hand, her stance changing to instant combat readiness. "You will find I'm not quite as defenceless as I might appear."

"I'm not here to fight you, Master Quatra." Morrigance kept her tone respectful. "Nor am I personally here to kill you."

"No?" Quatra raised an eyebrow. Her lightsabers ignited simultaneously, incandescent blue. "Then why, exactly are you here?"

Morrigance made Leandra's face smile again, broader than ever – warm and friendly. "Me? I'm here to distract you."

_Celyanda, now._

Two further lightsabers ignited, blazing silver-white in the descending gloom. Holding them, twin figures emerged from the surrounding undergrowth, flanking Quatra on either side.

-

An airlock on Kamari station, as pristine and sterile as all the gleaming white metal that surrounded it. A spaceship, too large for one of the internal landing bays, had docked there several minutes earlier. As yet, there had been no sign of movement from within. No one had answered any hails or attempts at opening communication.

With each passing second where absolutely nothing happened, the tension among those watching and waiting ramped up another notch.

Finally, there was movement – a shadow passing across the transparisteel window set in the airlock door. A murmur spread like a ripple through the assembled gathering.

A few seconds later, there was a soft hissing sound as different atmospheric pressures equalised. Then the airlock door opened. In the region of two dozen blaster rifles shifted fractionally in nervous grips. There was a collective intake of breath.

Then a lone, dark-robed figure stepped into view. A lightsaber dangled casually from one hand, unlit, while a broad and friendly looking smile spread across the man's lips.

There was no challenge. No order to stop or surrender. A hail of blaster fire met him, far too focused and intense for that single lightsaber blade to block.

* * *

_Again, many, many thanks to Jedi Boadicea for beta reading for me._


	17. A Lesson in Pain

**17. A Lesson in Pain**

Dustil Onasi wiped a hand across his brow, smearing sweat and grease in messy streaks. He laid the hydrospanner down carefully on the pitted, oil-stained plastocrete floor and quietly closed the side compartment in the speeder's main thrust engine.

Then, still lying on his back, he listened intently, despite the fact that he knew with queasy certainty that it wasn't any sound that had caught his attention. He tried to strangle down the spark of Force presence inside himself even more firmly than he normally spent his every waking hour doing.

_Why now,_ an inner voice demanded. It sounded scared, and he gritted his teeth, angry with himself. His right hand crept across the plastocrete towards his toolbox. More especially, towards the vibroknife and holdout blaster it contained. In the background, he could make out the distant sounds of Coruscant's traffic. Slightly closer came muffled shouting and clanking as freight was unloaded from trucks in the surrounding depots. In the immediate proximity though, everything was quiet.

Far too quiet. Even the incessant background hum of Glotz whistling tunelessly or muttering to himself about the general unfairness of life was gone, replaced by slow, steady, rhythmical breathing.

_Asleep_. Dustil was almost surprised to find that the mechanic didn't snore.

Then he froze, fingertips still trailing short of the toolbox. His heart lurched, the abrupt, wild thumping of it drowning out everything else. Under the curve of the speeder's sleek hull, he could see someone standing. Or at least, he could see a pair of boots.

Black. Highly polished, with low heels. Practical design. The cut, and the slender leanness of the legs, were both subtly feminine. Above the tops of those boots, he could see the hem of a plain brown robe.

_Fraking, frak-faced frak. With frak on top._

Dustil's head tilted back and he found himself staring up at the ceiling, choking back on a rising panic attack. _A Jedi. _He had the sudden urge to drive his clenched fist hard into the plastocrete floor. _What in all the hells was a Jedi doing here?_

Except he knew the answer to that one well enough, didn't he? It had been bound to happen eventually. Somewhere inside he'd even been expecting it.

The Jedi hadn't moved, or spoken, or made any other attempt to announce her presence. Part of him clung to the hope that she hadn't noticed him yet – that if he didn't do anything to attract her attention she would eventually get bored and go away.

Except Jedi didn't get impatient. And she was looking directly at him. Or more precisely, at his feet, sticking out from underneath the speeder. Two people, completely silent, staring at each other's feet. It struck him that it should have been funny . . . except his sense of humour seemed suddenly to have atrophied.

Finally, he wetted painfully dry lips and forced himself to speak. "If you're looking for Mr Slynt, you want the office through the front entrance."

"Thank you." Dustil had heard more emotion from a computerised spaceport announcer. "But no, it's actually you I'm here to see, Dustil."

"Dustil?" He tried to keep his voice neutral; disinterested. _Fraking, fraking frak_.

"Everyone here thinks your name is Nikos. That's what your ident papers say. But we both know differently, don't we?"

"Do we?" He snagged the holdout, for all the good it would do him. She stood squarely between him and the exit.

"Shall we do each other the courtesy of not playing games? I know that you're Dustil Onasi, only son of the Republic war hero, Carth Onasi. I know that you dropped out of the Coruscant Academy three months ago; walked out of your brand new apartment, and haven't touched a single credit from the sizeable allowance fund your father set up on your behalf. There are certain lies we can bypass."

_Just frak off. I _don't_ want to talk to you._ The temptation to use his old trick for ending unwanted conversations flared briefly despite the vows he'd made, but . . . on a Jedi of any strength, it was likely to prove entirely counterproductive.

And she _was_ strong. Senses he'd been striving to ignore for a _long_ time told him that much.

Taking a deep breath, slipping the tiny blaster he held up the sleeve of his oil-stained coveralls, Dustil forced himself to rise to his feet. He could feel his stomach fluttering unpleasantly. "So, what is it you want exactly, Jedi?" Jedi was pronounced as an insult. "I'd have thought you'd have more important things to worry about, what with your own masters being murdered in recreation parks."

He'd seen the breaking news feeds a couple of hours earlier, on his break. They'd left him fighting down deep disquiet. Perhaps he should have paid that disquiet more heed.

"I am no more a Jedi than you are a speeder mechanic."

He stared at her. The hood of her robe was pulled up, her face concealed in shadow. Just for a moment though . . . it didn't look like she had any face at all. Simply a blank space.

Suddenly his heart was thumping again. He swallowed, trying to find his voice. It had a hard, angry edge when he finally spoke. "Then you're every bit a Jedi."

"Is this _really_ all you want, Dustil?" He thought she was amused, though there was no external sign of it. "Do you really think that this is what the universe is going to allow you to be?"

"I don't give a frak. I've heard all that tedious bantha swill about destiny and the will of the Force before. Get out of here, Jedi. I told Thalia I wasn't interested. I'm telling you the same."

That had been what put him on this course. Part of it, anyway. Thalia May and Kel Algwinn had come to see him in the pristine apartment that was supposed to be his home – the apartment his father had bought for him. They'd both been dressed in plain Padawans' robes, and had spoken calmly and matter-of-factly about second chances and opportunities to make atonement; of serving something far deeper and more rewarding than simply oneself. He'd barely recognised them, entirely different people to the individuals he'd known on Korriban. They'd hardly seemed like people at all in fact – smiling, brainwashed automata serenely spouting dogma.

And that had terrified a deep-seated part of him; filled another part with burning rage. Jedi. Sith. The galaxy would be better off without either. He hadn't actually told Thalia he wasn't interested. Instead, he'd said that he would think carefully about their words as he ushered them out the front door. The moment it had closed behind their backs, he'd started packing his bags.

He realised now he should have gone off world.

"I told you, I'm not a Jedi." She stepped forward, and the shadows beneath her cowl lost some of their depth.

She wore a featureless metal mask beneath. Dustil stared at it, his own shadowy reflection faintly visible in the mirrored surface. He could see his hair standing up in wild spikes. "What then?" There was an abrupt heaviness inside, and the realisation that he was – potentially – hiding from far worse things than Jedi. "Sith?"

"Would a Sith have settled for putting your friend there to sleep? Would we simply be talking now?"

He took a step back from her, inwardly weighing up his options. He could, he judged, have the holdout in hand and fire before she could ignite a lightsaber and block. However, the shot would have to be near perfect.

And it was his father who was the crack shot of the family.

Instead, he stepped to the side, hoping to draw her into walking round the speeder and opening up a clear line to the exit.

"Maybe. Maybe not," he said. Not idiot bullies like Bandon, Shaardan and Lashowe had been, certainly. But others, like Master Yuthura . . . she'd been able to tie them into knots simply by raising one brow, or smiling in a certain way. She'd rarely had to resort to anything as uncouth as threats. "And _that_ wasn't a denial."

"No it wasn't." She made no move to follow him around the speeder. "I'm a Sith in exactly the same way that you're a Sith, Dustil."

"And what's that supposed to mean, precisely?" He thought about trying to tap the Force to speed his movement as he made a run for it. It was a long time since he'd done anything like that, and he'd spent a long time trying to forget he even possessed that ability – to suppress it until it eventually withered and died entirely, leaving him free to live a normal life.

"That I left them, just like you did. Two years ago now, in fact, after it became very clear that our vision had been lost. Those weren't the reasons I'd joined the fight."

"Well, hey, I'm happy for you. But whatever it is you're trying to peddle, save your breath. If this is an invitation to some kind of Sith deserters' reunion party or something, then sorry, but please pass on my regrets."

The mask of course gave no hint of an underlying expression, but he had the impression she was amused once more. "Are you happy, Dustil? Do you like your job here, working for a pittance for Keigo Slynt? Perhaps it's all the fascinating people you come into contact with that makes it so rewarding for you?" There was an odd twist to her voice as she spoke – inwardly directed he thought. "Do you truly think you're fulfilling even a fraction of your potential?"

"I don't deal with people who hide behind masks." He made his voice cold and hard.

After several very long seconds, the woman nodded. "A sensible enough attitude, I suppose." Then she reached up and freed a pair of hidden catches.

For a moment, Dustil thought he was going to pass out, the rest of the world suddenly very, very distant. He couldn't wrench his gaze away.

"Is it all right if I put it back on now?" Her voice was different now, no longer so artificial. He wondered how she even formed words without the aid of lips. "One of the reasons I wear it is because otherwise, I'm prone to picking up infections."

Dustil nodded vaguely. _Dear, sweet Force . . ._ "W-What happened to you?"

The mask clicked pack into place. "A war wound."

He swallowed, thoughts whirring. If she'd incurred an injury like that on a battlefield, it would have killed her. There was nothing accidental that could cause such specifically targeted damage . . . "Someone did that to you deliberately." He felt suddenly nauseous. "It was a punishment."

She inclined her head – didn't say anything.

"Can't you . . .. Can't anyone do anything to fix it?"

There was a pause. "Possibly," she said finally. "But it would be a very lengthy and expensive procedure, and in the end it wouldn't be _my_ face it restored. Besides, it's the scars we all carry on the inside that are the worst ones, wouldn't you agree?"

Dustil groped for some kind of response. All of a sudden, he felt almost entirely enervated, unable to get past the vision of that near-skeletal visage. "What do you want? Why come to me?" This time the words were quiet and subdued.

"Maybe I want to help you."

The cynicism, and the fear, were back, full force. "Right."

"Can't you see what you're doing to those around you, Dustil? Can't you see what you're becoming?"

"What I'm becoming?" His face twisted in an angry sneer. Anger was better than fear. Or doubt. "Oh, _please_. Just frak off. Whoever the hell you really are."

"Morrigance."

"What?"

"My name. My real name, for what it's worth."

Dustil was starting to look to the exits again, desperate to be away. Away from her.

She noticed, apparently. "Run away then, if that's what you want. I won't chase you. Disappear again, somewhere else this time. A deeper, darker hole. It won't make any difference. Someone will still find you, and you'll still become what you're becoming."

"So what am I becoming? I asked once. Stop babbling." The rage was searing then, and he embraced it. He could use it. Feed from it . . .. Uthar Wynn's voice was close then, an echoing ghost in his soul. Gritting his teeth, he shoved it away. No. He'd abandoned that. It was no longer a part of his life.

Morrigance seemed oblivious to the inner turmoil. "If you used your eyes – your senses – instead of trying to hide away, you'd know already."

He sneered again, though it was forced and unconvincing this time.

"A black hole of bad luck; a singularity of negative probability." Quiet and calmly matter-of-fact. "That's what you are now."

Dustil snorted, caught unawares. "Is this some kind of joke?"

He could sense her amusement and grimaced, adding. "My luck is just fine."

"_Your_ luck, yes," she agreed. "Because you're the beating heart of the singularity. Take how you got this job, for instance. An accident with a repulsor-jack. A paralysing injury to open up a vacancy, just when you needed it."

As he listened to her, he felt something twist inside. His teeth ground together. He wanted to barge past her and out of there, but something held him in place.

"Perhaps you'd like to ask Mr Slynt about profits since you started working for him? About all the inventory that's been damaged in transit; the break ins; the emergency loan he's been forced to take out with Reedol Larp. And I don't suppose you've noticed the way that the speeders you work on have an alarming tendency to be involved in traffic accidents? No? Check. It's really quite alarming. Three of them fatal in the past month. Nothing to do with your skill as a mechanic, I hasten. You're actually quite good at that."

"You're lying." Something in his saliva tasted bitter.

"Am I? Well, you can verify what I say one way or another easily enough. And then we come to the matter of Elendri Ves."

In that moment, it felt like something in him was going to seize up entirely. "Don't" It was barely audible, but steeped in fury.

If Morrigance noticed, she didn't seem to care. "A purple Twi'lek. Interesting. Do you find it comforting when she tells you what to do?"

Dustil's voice wouldn't work. The urge to simply use the holdout and damn any other consequences was almost overpowering.

"She was going to leave when she met you, you know that? She'd finally saved up enough money and gathered together enough courage to take the out she's been searching for since she was thirteen. But then she met you, and fell in love, and decided to stay put just a little longer. What are the odds, do you think, a few months down the line, of her being beaten to death when – because of you – she refuses the implied extras that go with a massage?"

"Shut up!" Suddenly the holdout blaster was in his hand, pointed directly at that polished metal mask. "Get out of here. Now!" He forced his voice slightly calmer. "You know that, as a Sith, I won't hesitate to shoot you for a second."

She didn't move. "But you're not a Sith anymore, are you Dustil?" The words were calmly clinical. "That's the whole problem, isn't it? You're not anything at all."

"I _will_ shoot." It sounded hollow and desperate even to his own ears.

"You can't hide from the Force, Dustil. You can't cut yourself off from it, however hard you try, because it's inside you, and it _has_ been awakened. The more you try to run away and deny it, the more it will find other ways of leaking out. And with you, right now, it leaks out dark, tainting everything and everyone around you. It will only get worse."

He wanted to scream denial, but somewhere inside every single word made perfect sense, biting deep.

"So you just show up out of nowhere, and, out of nothing more than the pure goodness of your heart, you want to help me. Yeah, right." He put every bit of venom and contempt he could muster into his voice. "Bit stupid of you to risk my aura of bad luck though, supposing for a moment that it's even fractionally true."

"I can shield myself." She sighed abruptly. "Nothing I've told you is a lie. Elendri . . . well, Elendri is just a guess, but an educated one I think. Are you really going to take that risk?"

"Last chance." He tightened his finger on the blaster's trigger.

Her apparent calm remained infuriatingly unaffected. "I'm going to reach into my pocket now. Just a warning. I'd prefer not be shot in the head in the meantime."

Dustil stared at her as she pulled out a datacard and laid it on the floor between them.

"I don't expect you to just accept my word. I know you're not an idiot. But check out what I've told you. I urge you to do that much, at least." She nodded down at the datacard. "That contains contact details you can use do get in touch with me during the next 72 hours. Or throw it away, if that's what you _really_ want."

Then she turned her back on him and started walking away. Dustil kept the blaster trained on her back, but he knew he wouldn't pull the trigger. He felt drained – empty. Something crawled in his gut.

At the threshold, she paused and glanced back. "Oh, just one more thing."

She nodded towards Glotz's unconscious form. "Since he started working with you, he's begun to experience pain while he's urinating. Tell him to get it checked out. It's every bit as serious as he's too scared to admit thinking."

Then she was gone.

-s-s-

"See, Mr Mayer? These Sith are not so invincible as you make out, hmm?" This was followed by a rather odd, liquid chuckling noise.

Carth barely heard Illacq, the Quarren duty officer responsible for security on the outer ring of Kamari Station. Instead, he was staring down from the security station window at the scene unfolding below him with a mixture of grim fascination and dread.

Twenty-one separate shots from Republic standard issue blaster rifles slammed into the Catcher as near to simultaneously as made no difference. Another three went wide. The lightsaber dangling from the Dark Jedi's hand didn't shift even fractionally in an attempt to block. Not that it would have made much difference if it had.

There was no crack and flash of personal shields, though given the concentrated power of that barrage, any personal shield Carth knew about would have been torn to shreds inside a fraction of a second. And the blaster shots definitely hit a target solid enough to stop them.

Yet the Catcher didn't go down.

The smile on his darkly handsome face remained fixed. He kept on walking smoothly forwards at exactly the same pace as before, entirely unscarred by the hail of incandescent energy.

"You were saying?" Yolanda's voice, desert dry, expressed exactly what Carth was thinking. His throat was clenched too tightly right then to make speech an option, though.

The Quarren made a noise akin to a deflating balloon. From below came muffled shouts of disbelief, then urgency – frantically yelled orders to stop or they would shoot again.

The second volley of blaster shots was far more erratic than the first, barely half of them finding their intended target. The Catcher kept on advancing, no more affected than before. His fixed smile didn't waver.

"Something is wrong here." Dr Ellas's statement seemed so utterly and blindingly obvious that it almost made Carth laugh.

Off to one side, one of the automatic doors down below them opened spontaneously, seemingly with no one nearby. A few seconds later it closed again, though Carth barely noticed. His attention remained fixed on the Catcher as he advanced steadily through the now continuous barrage of blaster fire, as easily as if he was strolling through nothing more taxing than a light, refreshing rain.

And suddenly, the Catcher seemed to be glowing, bright enough that it rapidly became painful to look at. _What the . . .?_

"Get down!" It was Ellas's voice, louder and more emphatic than Carth had heard it before. Seemingly, it had an element of the Force woven into it, because Carth's body responded before his brain could consciously intervene.

He had a last, lingering impression of the Catcher dissolving to reveal something else – something hard and metallically glinting; a droid, perhaps – underneath. Then he was face down on the security station floor, Yolanda already beside him.

A fraction of a second later there was an explosion.

Even muffled through the several centimetres of reinforced durasteel, the noise was deafening. Even face down, with his hands cradling his head and his eyes screwed tight shut, the intensity of the flash turned everything behind his eyelids white. There was a high, tortured shrieking as metal tore and buckled, and suddenly intense heat washed over his back, uncomfortable even through an insulating layer of padded armour.

Then calm reasserted itself.

The only sound, apart from a phantom roaring in his ears, was the steady crackling of nearby fires. Stumbling slightly, wincing, he forced himself back to his feet.

Yolanda was already up, blaster in hand, face angry red as though with sunburn. The ends of her blonde wig were badly charred. Ellas was in the process of rising, looking equally the worse for wear.

Illacq though . . .

The Quarren had apparently been slow to react to Ellas's warning, resistant to the Force in a most unfortunate way. A plate of transparisteel, torn free from the security station's window, had sliced right through him from left shoulder to somewhere just beneath his left armpit. Thin, oily blood the colour of liquorice was splattered everywhere.

The smell of it hit the back of Carth's throat and suddenly he was struggling to stop himself from vomiting. He wheeled away, gasping for air. Down on the floor below, there was absolute carnage. The entire security force had been utterly annihilated. All Carth could see of them were a series of charred, contorted lumps where even species was impossible to determine visually. That urge to vomit redoubled.

And in his mind's eye he could see the automatic door, seemingly opening spontaneously for no good reason . . .

He swore, drawing the matched pair of vibroblades strapped across his back. Fear spiked hard, turning his voice harsh. "Get out of here. Now! He's coming for us."

And in his head, he heard the Catcher chuckle. _Carth_ . . . _so nice to see you survived. Shall we play a little game?_

-s-s-

"That's her then, is it?"

Tamar had, of course, known that Bastila was waiting for him. A moment later, he'd also known that she'd known that he knew, and stopped in front of the closed door. Before that, he'd been on the point of walking straight back to the shuttle's main passenger hold. Putting it off a little bit longer.

The door slid closed at his back, cutting them both off from the rest of the ship.

He sensed a flash of annoyance from her then. It was inwardly directed, he sensed – frustration that her words and emotions weren't more controlled. They were both out of practise at dealing with each other at this proximity, and things were slipping through that never had before.

It wasn't making the situation any easier for either of them.

"Her?" he asked quietly, knowing well enough. Better faced now than avoided, he tried to tell himself. The situation between them was in danger of turning poisonous. He could feel it. At the moment, the re-opened bond was more like a shared, festering wound.

"Yuthura Ban. That's her name, isn't it? Who else did you think I meant, precisely?" The clipped preciseness of it made him wince. He didn't need a bond to read that.

A fraction later, he almost winced again as the implications of what she was saying sank in.

"Of course I bloody felt it," she went on, in response to words not yet voiced. "You weren't making any attempt at all to shield it from me, were you? It wasn't like I could avoid knowing what was going on." Bastila paused briefly then, seemingly searching for something in his face. Her eyes were so intense they were difficult to look at. "That first time, I was in the middle of a Battle Meditation trance. Perhaps that made me more sensitive to it? I don't know, but it was certainly an _interesting_ distraction."

_While you were having your fun, I was almost dying_. Her meaning came through clearly enough.

An immediate and instinctive apology rose to his lips, but he caught the words before they were voiced and stopped them. No, he decided, _that_ was something he wouldn't apologise for.

Instead, he said, "You're right. I should have thought to shield you from it. But I didn't stop to consider the possibility. I _am_ sorry about that."

She snorted – looked away from him. The small chamber they were in acted as the shuttle's security station, and the jaundiced light from the surrounding monitors imparted an unhealthy pallor to her skin. She looked worn – not quite fragile, but somehow abraded.

"And there I was thinking that it was my darkness. My fall, and my weakness, that drove you away from me. Now I wonder if I simply wasn't dark enough to suit your tastes." There was a raw edge to the words – scathing bitterness.

Tamar bit back on an angry retort. Yuthura, he reminded himself, was more than capable of defending herself. Letting this become that kind of argument wouldn't help anyone.

He took a deep, calming breath. "I thought when we parted, that it was a mutual decision. One we _both_ agreed on, for _both_ our sakes."

Anger flashed across the bond. "Easier for you that way, isn't it?"

He stayed silent. Anything he said right than would only act as a provocation.

Finally, she looked round at him again. "Do you love her?"

_Yes_, he started to say.

That was something else he would not lie about or apologise for. Besides, the bond made it difficult to sustain lies for any length of time. That had already been proven with bitter certainty.

She continued too quickly for him, though. "Do you love her the way you could not love me?"

He choked the yes back as the meaning of it suddenly changed – became far more hurtful. And deliberately so, of course. "What am I supposed to say to that, exactly, Bastila?"

"That's down to you, I'm sure."

Looking at her face, he was filled with sudden pain. But he also knew that anything he said to try to make it better would only be more cowardice at this point. He took another steeling breath. "Yes, I do love her. And yes, I love her in a different way to the way I loved you. It was cowardly and cruel and weak of me to do what I did to you, and I should never have tried to pretend there was something between us that there wasn't. For that I _am_ profoundly sorry." There was a bitterness of his own creeping into his voice then, turning the words into something different than they'd started out as.

Bastila's face had gone pale. Silence grew between them – a devouring black hole.

Eventually she let out a shaky breath. "I swore I wasn't going to let this happen. I swore I was going to remain entirely calm and controlled. That I had moved beyond it."

"Bastila . . ."

She shook her head. "No Tamar, I don't mean moved beyond it as a Jedi. I'm not back to that. I just mean it as . . . as a person. None of us have time for this right now, do we?"

He nodded cautious agreement. Something still simmered at the edges of the bond, and for once he wished he could interpret it more clearly.

_None of us have time for this_. There was an element of accusation in those words too, he thought with an inward sigh. "I am sorry it's turned out this way between us, Bastila. I didn't do any of this to try and hurt you."

She made a small, choked sound. "Perhaps if you stopped trying so hard not to hurt me, it would all be a damn sight less painful."

They just stood there, looking at each other.

Before he could say anything more, conciliatory or otherwise, his communicator beeped. "What is it?" he snapped.

"Sir, there appears to be a . . . problem with the _Rancorous_." The shuttle pilot's voice was studiedly neutral, explaining the situation rapidly.

"I'll be with you in a few seconds. Out."

"Problem?" Bastila inquired. She was suddenly all cool, crisply efficient business. On the surface, at least. The undertones of their conversation still echoed quietly across the bond.

"Problem," he agreed.

The problem in question became absolutely apparent the moment they stepped onto the shuttle's cramped bridge.

The view screen showed the _Rancorous,_ dead centre, looming and monstrously ugly as ever. There was another vessel in shot too, however. A Republic cruiser, not that much smaller than the _Rancorous_ itself. It had caught the Hutt vessel broadside on, the main bulk of its weaponry aimed away from it. There appeared to be something of a stand off.

It was easy enough to see what had happened.

The Republic cruiser was an absolute wreck, scarred by turbo laser and proton torpedo impacts, huge sections of its hull sliced open, the decks beneath exposed to vacuum. To Tamar's eye – which in this case, most definitely _was_ Revan's eye, and knew exactly what it was looking at – it seemed borderline miraculous that all the massively obvious damage hadn't triggered either catastrophic reactor or structural failure and destroyed the vessel entirely.

Simplicity itself for it to play possum, powered down, just another lifeless hulk floating amid the rest of the scattered debris. And easy for them to pass right over it in the cursory sensor sweeps they'd carried out. More often than not, you didn't look twice if you saw exactly what you expected to see.

A Republic cruiser was not going to take kindly to a Hutt vessel showing up way out here, seemingly intent on scavenging their corpses. It was certainly going to be very curious – to say the least – about the display they'd put on earlier when opening the wormhole.

He opened a comm link. "You there, Jolee?"

"Where else, exactly, did you think I would be?" came the tart response.

"Er . . ." he stopped suddenly. "Sorry, could you hold a moment?"

Tamar ignored the ear-blistering response, watching as Bastila leant forward, speaking to the co-pilot. "Hail the Republic ship, please." There was enough authority in her tone that the man didn't even bother asking Tamar for confirmation.

"Starlight Phoenix," she intoned, "This is Jedi Knight Bastila Shan. Could I speak to Captain Organa?"

There was a hesitation before a response came. "Jedi Bastila, this is Captain Vance. Captain Organa isn't available right now unfortunately." There was a slight pause. "It's good to hear your voice, Jedi Bastila. We assumed you were dead."

-s-s-

Carth caught the vibroblade between both of his and shoved hard, sending his attacker reeling backwards. A fast, angled slash tore through disarrayed defences before the man could recover, slicing deep into his midriff.

The Sith Assassin made a soft, hollow sound and collapsed.

Something moved in the corner of Carth's vision. He whirled, twin blades moving to intercept a new threat . . .

But Yolanda's wrist blade had already taken the second assailant through the side of his neck. The Sith crumpled soundlessly, sliding off the blade and falling limply across the one Carth had killed just prior.

Everything was still. Alarms rang out in the distance.

The attack had lasted about five seconds flat, and now there were four dead bodies decorating the corridor around them, leaking blood. Without Ellas's warning, moments prior to the quartet of Sith materialising out of thin air around them, there was a strong likelihood that there would now only be three bodies – of rather different identity – littering the ground.

The immediate edge of the adrenaline rush faded, leaving Carth feeling empty and slightly nauseous – as it always did. He could suddenly feel the stinging pain from his left shoulder, where the first assassin's opening lunge had scored a glancing hit. From plentiful experience, he could tell that it was nothing more than a flesh wound, but with repeated exertion, it was soon going to start hampering him quite badly.

A sideways glance showed Yolanda to be uninjured, though the blonde wig was gone entirely now. Ellas was a different matter, a gaping tear in the side of his robe, the surrounding fabric heavy with blood.

"Do not worry yourself." The Caamasi apparently noticed the direction of Carth's gaze, and the thought behind it. "My healing skills, at least, are competent."

He might, Carth thought, account himself a fallen Jedi, but the infuriating calm and seeming lack of urgency were still there by the bucketful.

Stepping forward, Ellas laid a large but deftly gentle hand on Carth's shoulder before he could protest. Almost immediately, the stinging sensation eased.

"How many?" Yolanda's interruption held more than enough urgency to make up for Ellas's apparent lack and then some.

"What?" Maybe the healing had left him befuddled or something, because he didn't catch her meaning at all.

"You said that you saw the door open before the explosion." It was spoken with a kind of weary patience. "How long was it open? How many got through?"

Carth called the image up inside his head and did some calculations. He could feel his heart starting to race again; the renewed flow of adrenaline. "Six to eight maybe, if they were moving fast."

"The door was wide enough to accommodate two abreast."

"Then make that twelve to sixteen." His voice was heavy.

They stood and stared at one another.

Yolanda was the first to put it into words. "Too many. We can't stand and fight that."

Carth wanted to argue, except he didn't have anything that remotely resembled an argument. He swore beneath his breath; tried to clear his head. It didn't help a plan form. "Then we lead them to the service levels, away from the populated areas."

"And then?"

"And then we improvise," he snapped, before immediately regretting it. He spread his hands placatingly. "If either of you have a better idea, then please."

"We go to the doctor's ship and get the hell away from here. How's that for right off the top of my head?"

Carth was already shaking his head. "Not an option. This isn't a military station. It'll be like a nexu pack crashing a wedding banquet."

"Fine."

The way she said it made him wince. He knew that tone of voice well enough, and again it left him thinking of Morgana. What it said was: _you can have your way for now, Carth Onasi, but there will be payback, and that payback will be written in suffering and blood. _Your_ suffering and blood._

"So let's get moving." He was uncomfortably aware that every second they wasted brought the remaining Sith assassins – _and of course, the Catcher; let's not forget him_ – that bit closer. And the only warning they'd likely have was a split second as Ellas felt a flickering disturbance through the Force.

And so they ran. It wasn't quite as fast as Carth would have liked, since Caamasi seemed to be built for stately elegance rather out and out speed, but they ran. All the time he could feel the Catcher like an itch.

The Catcher was laughing at him still. _Shall we play a little game?_

As they reached the service lifts, the lights went out.

_Shall we play a game?_

In that moment of absolute blackness, it felt as if he'd been plunged into a bottomless pit. The terror of it was something primal – consuming. What he'd felt in the Catcher's presence on Berchest had been the merest foretaste – a palate cleansing _aperitif_.

Deprived of sensory input, balance and sense of direction flipped out. He slammed straight into a wall.

Shock, it seemed, was good at distracting from terror. As, apparently, was pain. Something close to rational thought penetrated the swirling tides of gibbering insanity. He'd split his head open, and could feel blood trickling down his scalp. Somewhere, close yet worlds away in the blackness, Yolanda groaned.

The lights came back on.

Or backups did, at least. They were dim and dingy in comparison to the previous sterile brightness. He glanced momentarily sideways. Blood was, inexplicably trickling from the corner of Yolanda's mouth. Then his gaze returned to the corridor ahead.

"Yeah, let's play a bantha fraking game." Carth hadn't intended to speak aloud, and didn't realise he had until he heard the words echoing slightly off the walls.

The answering laughter was real. Not some projection or figment in his head.

"I'm glad you see it my way, Carth."

He was there, standing about thirty metres in front of them in the middle of the corridor. Smiling. It was difficult to see at this distance, but Carth knew that he was smiling.

"Last time we spoke you said you were going to track me down and kill me. That wa_s_ rather silly of you." The Catcher's head tilted to one side – a dark carrion bird; harbinger of death. "Nevertheless, I thought it only sporting to indulge you. Bliss says hello, by the way. She forgives you for hiding from her. She understands your fear."

The twin vibroblades were back in hand. They weren't his own beautifully crafted, Echani made weapons, the grips worn from years of use to perfectly fit his hands. Canderous had once laughed at those. _Are you a simpering girl, Onasi? That's all those things are fit for._ Instead, they were stock Republic issue he'd scrounged from Station security. The comfort they provided was negligible.

"Let her go." Fury filled him as he enunciated the words slowly and clearly. It thrummed in its intensity.

Behind the Catcher, the lights went out again, leaving him as nothing more than a vague outline against the darkness. A living part of that darkness. Fear rose again in black waves, but the fury within Carth rose with it.

At his side, Yolanda whirled away, filling the corridor behind them with fizzing blaster fire. Covering any attempt by more of the Sith assassins to sneak up on them. A smart tactical move, but from the sound of it none of the shots hit anything other than the plasteel walls.

He didn't look around. A pace or so behind, he heard Ellas's lightsaber ignite, bathing the walls on either side in garish green glow.

Part of him wanted to tell the doctor not to interfere, but that would require too much of his attention. If he let himself be distracted from the fury, there would only be the fear.

The Catcher started to advance towards them. As he did so, each light fitting he passed exploded in a shower of sparks, giving the impression of a wall of absolute, swallowing darkness following after him like a trailing cloak.

Carth stepped forward to meet him. He was biting down so hard that he could hear his own teeth squeaking from the strain. Vaguely he was aware of Ellas saying something, but it bounced straight off. There was only the advancing darkness.

There was still a gap of more than ten metres between them when the darkness raised a hand and pointed at him.

Ellas said something else, louder. It made no more impression than before, though for different reasons this time.

Carth's stride broke. Suddenly, his skin was burning hot, though inside he felt like ice. He was shivering violently. Sweat poured off him in sheets. His mouth opened, and dimly, as though from a long distance away, he heard himself gasp.

The floor swayed and tilted, and he stumbled. His just healed shoulder slammed hard into the wall, breaking open the cut again. And then the nausea hit and he was throwing up, so violently it felt like he was trying to regurgitate his own internal organs – forcibly turn himself inside out.

The advancing darkness came ever closer. Carth groaned, struggling to even draw breath. His hands were shaking badly with the effort of holding onto his vibroswords, delirium rising with the fever wracking him and making it a struggle to think in anything other than rapidly contracting circles.

He strove to focus on the Catcher's face, and retain his grasp upon the fury that seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright; the only thing left to him to cling to. His body fell into an Echani battle stance out of pure habit. The blood flowing through his ears roared.

Yolanda shouted something.

_Valden? _

_He was Valden, wasn't he?_

He tried to clear his head, shaking it almost madly. Something hit the ground with a thump, sliding past him. It stopped between the Catcher's feet, Carth's eyes unable to focus on it through stinging veils of sweat.

Suddenly something yanked him backwards, hard. _Permacrete detonator_. The object had been a permacrete detonator. Like the one they'd use to stage that Twi'leks death, back on Taris. When Tamar wasn't Revan too, and it was all less complicated . . .. As he hit the floor at Dr Ellas's feet, Carth felt obscurely pleased with himself for working all that out.

Before the detonating flash, Carth thought he saw the Catcher blink out of existence like a . . . like a hologram. He heard laughter, in his head and real, only still about thirty metres away . . .

Then everything was heat and roaring sound.

Then not even that.

"Damn it, you ronto-loving, Hutt-spawned bastard. You're too fraking heavy for me to drag!"

Carth groaned. For a moment, he was sure he was going to vomit again, but the sensation passed. His vision was a mass of weird pale, gyrating blobs, behind which other vague shapes – the real world –lurked. His skin still felt burning hot, but it was a different kind of burning than before. Not the Force-induced, feverish delirium.

Yolanda was holding him beneath the armpits, dragging him bodily along the floor. He shrugged her off, and managed to haul himself upright. Together they stumbled through a nearby doorway. Acrid smoke mixed with the salty, metallic taste of blood in his mouth to form something decidedly unpleasant.

_The service lift_. His vision had taken on enough definition for him to finally work that much out. As Yolanda operated the doors, he slumped against the back wall. His entire body felt like one single massive bruise. He tilted his head back, sliding slowly down to the floor, eyes slipping closed . . .

Then he remembered something important. "Hold on. Where's Ellas?"

"Holding off the assassins. He said not to wait." The answer was devoid of any emotion.

Something inside him clenched. "Wait. We can't just . . ."

She turned and looked back at him. "If he's so intent on some ennobling act of self-sacrifice, then who are we to stop him?" Her face was still no more than a vague, pale shape, but he didn't miss the absolute implacability of her tone.

Carth stared at her.

With a grating judder, they began their descent.

-s-s-

He'd lost her. The conclusion, which had been nudging around the basement of Dustil's thoughts for the past couple of minutes, finally breached the surface.

He swore venomously beneath his breath, but at the same time part of him was relieved. It was the same kind of shaky relief he'd felt on Korriban, when a nighttime Tukata hunt turned up nothing.

The words hadn't been far enough beneath his breath, obviously. A large and typically belligerent looking Aqualish turned and glared his way, then started advancing towards him, chest puffing out threateningly.

Dustil quickened his pace, ducking behind a trolley being pushed by a work-droid. The Force was as close to the surface in him as it had been in months, rising up unbidden through the cracks in his guard that the meeting with Morrigance had inflicted. He deliberately refrained from using it though, not yet ready to take that one irrevocable step.

A step he knew he would never have the willpower to go back from.

It would have been easy though. He could tell that much, just from the brief sense of the Aqualish's mind he'd gotten before he strangled everything back. It had been half-pickled on juma-juice, needing only the slightest nudge.

Fortunately, it proved easy enough to lose himself amid the aisles of bulk transport crates. A reminder though. This wasn't the place to let oneself become sloppy or distracted. In that sense, it wasn't all that different from Korriban.

_This_ was Agatan freighter port, on Coruscant's equator, half a world away from the Senate and the Jedi Temple, and the government districts of the world-spanning city. Half a world away in distance, anyway. In other respects, it was nearer several galaxies removed.

Here the Exchange seemed to run at least half of everything, and the other half . . . well, Dustil suspected _that_ was controlled by interests far less savoury than even them. If you transplanted this place onto Nar Shaddaa, it would be smuggler's moon that was made the seedier for it.

Ducking out of the maze of containers, he tried to get his thoughts in order – work out his next move. Morrigance's words still played inside him, over and over, cutting deep even second hand.

And her face was there, under even that. He wasn't sure if he was ever going to be entirely rid of that.

Bitter anger flared. _Damn you, bitch. Why couldn't you stay out of my life? _Not a Jedi, according to her words, but she certainly interfered like one.

The problem was though, that he couldn't deny what she'd said. Even the most utterly ridiculous parts. Half-truths that bit and didn't let go – that was a particular form of torture both Jedi and Sith were equally adept at. He became aware then that his hands were clenched tightly into fists, and forced himself to try to relax.

_Elendri._

He had to find her. There at least was a concrete purpose.

It had been his intention – once he'd satisfied his . . . curiosity with Morrigance; satisfied himself there was breathing space – to raid his allowance for all the credits he could get, leave half for Elendri, and then simply disappear. It no longer mattered if anyone could use that action to trace him here, because by that time he'd be long gone.

Except . . . Elendri wasn't actually stupid, but in some ways she wasn't very bright either. If she had been, she'd never have taken up with him in the first place. It was a painful thing to acknowledge, but he couldn't escape the truth of it. She'd have taken her chance and gotten away without considering him at all. Alderaan, she'd always said, smiling in that way that made him feel so weak. Alderaan was supposed to be a nice place to be. They'd go there together one day, wouldn't they?

_So make her take the money. Then make her leave._

Except . . . she _wouldn't_ leave. There was a sick feeling that accompanied the thought. Not unless he made her utterly despise him. And then she'd throw anything he tried to give her right back in his face, no matter how much she needed it.

_Force, you're pathetic. Worse than Algwinn. Strength. Power. Victory. But scared of facing down a Twi'lek dancing girl._

Suddenly he was yanked brutally from his inner world. He stopped hard, staring at the spaceship occupying the landing bay in front of him. A stock freighter, originally of Correllian design, though the template had proved popular enough that it had been licensed right across the Republic. A combination of relatively small size coupled to high payload space and very powerful engines made it a particular favourite among smugglers.

And amnesiac former Dark Lords of the Sith.

Dustil started breathing again. The paint job on this was different to the vessel he'd once seen sitting in Dreshdae spaceport. Gunmetal and black rather than gunmetal and rust red. But paint jobs could be changed easily enough, and this one looked fresh . . .

_Back again, Dad? Run out of wars it's easier to fight than face up to your own life?_ His lips twisted bitterly with the thought, ridiculous though it was.

Using the datacard Morrigance had left him, he rapidly pulled up the manifest for the landing pad. The _Corvine_, it was listed as.

_Corvine_. Suddenly his skin was like ice. _A black bird_. Or, put it another way, _Ebon Hawk_.

_Frak, Dad. Learn a little subtlety, please_._ Or, at least, tell your world burning, badass of the universe best bud._

There was someone standing at the foot of the boarding ramp. Two someones, just emerged from inside the ship. Big, both of them. Very big. Dustil walked slowly around the perimeter of the landing bay, staring, until finally the angle of shadows shifted enough for him to get a proper look.

And then he felt something akin to relief.

The nearest, slightly smaller of the two figures glinted metallically. At first Dustil assumed it was a droid, but no – there was flesh there too. Dustil's gaze didn't linger on him though, moving to the individual standing next to him.

It was the first time in his life he'd ever been relieved to lay eyes on a Trandoshan. Nasty bastards, the lot of them, in his experience. Tempers worse than Hssiss with toothache.

But a Trandoshan made this _highly_ unlikely to be dad and friends. Trandoshans and Wookiees didn't cohabit well, for starters.

_And what would dad be doing here, anyway, Bantha-wit?_

_Looking for me, _another inner voice replied. It almost sounded hopeful.

Abruptly, Dustil's teeth were clenched again, hands forming fists. _Shut up, weakling_.

He was about to walk away – get out of there, and get his thoughts back on something that actually mattered – when his eyes caught on something that stopped him dead. A particular hull plate on the vessel's underside that bore heavy scarring.

In his minds eye he superimposed two near identical ships in his head. Then he swore, not particularly far underneath his breath this time. _Damn, damn, damn_.

A hand came up and rubbed across his face. He tried to tell himself that any vessel of this type that had a particular sort of bad landing would have scarring there. Except . . . his brain refused to bite.

The half-metal man had turned around and gone back inside the ship, while the Trandoshan was striding rapidly towards one of the landing pad exits. After watching for about a minute more, Dustil decided to risk taking a closer look, moving forward and round to the shelter of a refuelling rig. Morrigance and Elendri had suddenly faded to nothing more than twin shadows in his thoughts.

He studied the scarring on the hull plates intently, trying to persuade himself that they were coincidence. It could be. He hadn't ever seen the _Ebon Hawk_ at this proximity, so if he was honest with himself, this wasn't achieving much.

Especially when he should be concentrating on Elendri. _Just like dad. Typical Onasi, looking for new and bigger problems so you can ignore the ones you already have._

There was a soft sound directly behind him. He jolted hard, and span . . .

For a moment, crazily, he thought that his own shadow had detached itself and come to life.

Then, as his heart lurched wildly, he realised he was looking at a Defel. He'd heard about the species, but he'd never seen one at this proximity before, and in a half crouch as he was, their eyes were just about level.

"What are you doing?" it asked. It sounded surprisingly . . . normal.

"Hey, I wasn't looking to stow away. Honest." He tried to make the words sound frantically blurted; scared. It wasn't too much of a stretch.

The Defel didn't so much as blink.

Dustil stepped back, closer to the ship and suddenly the Force vanished.

-s-s-

Ulvol Ellas extinguished his lightsaber. His breath was coming hard.

As the humming cut off, it left a quiet that was decidedly unsettling. The abrupt loss of the weapon's bright green glow turned everything around him to shadow and half-light. He realised that the distant alarms had stopped.

Abruptly, Ellas staggered, gulping and leaning back hard against the wall to keep himself upright as the immediate rush of adrenaline faded. His fur was matted thickly with blood – all his own – and in places heavily scorched. The sting of more than half a dozen shallow and not so shallow cuts hit him then, far worse than when the wounds had initially been inflicted.

At his feet two more of the Sith killers lay dead, another pair at least having slipped past him while he was preoccupied, disappearing somewhere he could no longer sense. While he hadn't quite lied to Captain Onasi about his martial prowess, it was a truism that even the weakest and most inept of Jedi was not an opponent to be taken lightly.

He closed his eyes, centring himself. Finding calm amid the chaos. There, he felt out the extent of his injuries, almost instinctually channelling threads of Force just _so_ to repair and reconnect severed blood vessels, reknit cut flesh and muscle-fibre, and finally regrow broken skin. It wasn't as thorough a job as he'd normally have done, time allowing, but he felt comfortable that – in this thing at least – there was no other Jedi in the Order that could have done any better.

_And when did you start thinking of yourself as Jedi again_, a wry inner voice asked.

In some ways, Ellas supposed, he had never really stopped, no matter how much he might deny it vocally.

While he still held onto the Force, he extended his senses outwards, into the station around him, feeling the fluttering fluctuations of all the nearby life – a delicate and intricately beautiful web – as he searched for a hint of the Dark Jedi. This Catcher, as both Captain Onasi and the woman had called him.

That strange, uncanny presence, clothed in walls of obfuscating darkness and fear, had seemed to vanish in the moment of the explosion, and it was certainly nowhere close now . . .

There, several levels below.

He stopped, focusing in tight. It was easy to miss – no more than a kind of vagueness where his senses couldn't quite penetrate – but he knew with rapidly increasing surety that he wasn't mistaken. The Catcher had, it seemed, ignored him entirely, going straight after Onasi with an unrelentingly single-minded purpose.

Ellas opened his eyes and let out a steadying breath. So much for his conceit that the Sith would be bound to focus their attention upon a Force adept – that they would have no choice but to deal with that threat first.

Shakily, he started back towards the service lifts.

He wasn't quite sure if he should feel relieved or put out that no one seemed to have any interest whatsoever in killing him. It was certainly rather . . . humbling. Humour flashed briefly in him then.

Perhaps the entire Order as a whole might learn a valuable lesson if they were simply to be ignored.

-s-s-

_Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety six bottles of Tarisian ale on the wall, Nine-hundred-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety six bottles of Tarisian ale . . ._

The residue of toxic coolant at the bottom of the vast, hangar-sized tank sloshed around Carth's ankles. It was eating, very slowly, through the material of his boots. He'd been singing various drinking songs inside his head constantly for the past half hour, trying to drown out the connection to the Catcher – hide his thoughts behind a wall of maddening inanity.

He was certainly on the point of driving himself mad. What that said about the method's effectiveness, he had no idea. _Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-five bottles . . ._

Briefly, he broke off to shout into the comm. unit. "Now!"

Yolanda didn't answer, but Carth both heard and felt the heavy _clank_ and the low rumbling noise that followed it, indicating that she must have gotten the message.

_If one brown bottle should accidentally fall, there'd be nine-hundred . . ._

The small, dark-robed figure that had been steadily closing the distance between them stopped. After a brief pause, it looked back over its shoulder, where the route behind it was now very firmly closed.

A moment later, laughter echoed through the vast, cathedral-like space. "Oh, well done. Well done."

Carth clamped his mouth shut on any response – sought to hurl himself back into the flow of the idiot song inside his head. _And ninety-five_ . . . no, already done that. _Ninety-four bottles of Tarisian ale on the wall._

The Catcher started to walk towards him, brisk but by no means overly hurried. The ankle-deep coolant splashed with each step. Carth thought he could see that constant, hellish smile, despite the clinging gloom.

_Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-four . . ._

He hit a control on his belt, and the mechanised winch cable attached to it snapped taut, yanking him up from the coolant tank's bottom. Rapidly, he started to ascend towards a small, circular opening nearly twenty metres above his head.

_. . . Tarisian ale one the wall, Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand . . ._

The Catcher's lightsaber ignited, glowing red. Suddenly the Dark Jedi was running, blindingly fast, speed enhanced to a truly frightening degree . . .

Carth dropped a sonic grenade – the only type he'd been able to scrounge from the station arsenal. It detonated with a brilliant, percussive flash, catching the Catcher in its blast radius and hurling him backwards . . .

The winch came to a juddering halt, still at least two metres short of the tank's exit hatch.

Carth swore. Inside his head, he'd completely lost track of just how many bottles of Tarisian ale there were supposed to be on the wall. A downward glance between his dangling feet showed the Catcher rising smoothly from where he'd been thrown by the sonic detonation. He didn't seem the slightest bit impaired, though at least his lightsaber wasn't anywhere in sight anymore.

"Well, well. Look what the spider caught."

The voice sounded different from before, or maybe the explosion had done something to Carth's hearing. He strove to ignore it, attempting to pull himself up the remaining length of winch cable hand over hand. The muscles in his arms burned from the effort, and he could feel his palms slipping.

Beneath him, the dark, hooded figure walked easily forward until he stood directly beneath him. Its head tilted back . . .

_Frak knows how many bottles of Tarisian ale on the wall . . ._

Carth's hand slipped. The steel cable, designed for lifting heavy equipment rather than climbing, tore through the palm of his glove and ripped deep into the flesh beneath. He fell back with a ragged cry, bouncing around erratically on the end of the cable. The pain was absolutely excruciating, turning his vision red.

He continued to swing back and forth like a badly balanced pendulum. Beneath him, the Catcher was just standing there, watching.

Groaning, Carth forced himself to move – to do _something_. He attempted to pull one of his blasters from its belt holster, but the cable yanked taught against the rim of the opening above him at exactly the wrong moment, spinning him round and trapping his arm against his side. The blaster slipped free of his fingers . . .

And landed with a splash, directly between the Catcher's feet. Carth briefly closed his eyes.

Then the cable, a metre or so above his head, made a sharp twanging noise, spontaneously starting to fray apart. For a moment, Carth stared at it numbly. Then, in pure desperation, nearly screaming with the effort, he tried to pull himself up again.

His torn hand was simply unable to grip, the pain of even attempting to do so taking him to the edge of blacking out. He fell back.

As he dangled – a damaged puppet – a silhouette passed across the opening above, slender and graceful. It was gone so quickly that Carth wondered if it was just his imagination.

_Yolanda_.

The cable continued to work itself steadily and deliberately apart. _Not long now . . ._. He heard the Catcher chuckling in amusement. It seemed to be mainly inside his head.

Abruptly, the winch started again, jerking him rapidly upwards. By now, he was quite literally dangling by a thread.

Just as he reached and caught hold of the lip of the coolant tank, the cable snapped. For a moment, his legs kicked over nothing, and he started to slide back . . .

Then, somehow – a last, instinctual surge of adrenaline perhaps – he was up on solid ground, smeared red handprints covering the plasteel around him. Crackling Force lightning shot out of the tank behind him, filling the air with the stench of frying ozone.

Breath sawing, Carth forced himself to keep moving – to finish it.

Sweat stinging his eyes, he staggered against a nearby control console. Blinking rapidly, he tried to focus, before hitting a control. Behind him the tank sealed with a clang, cutting off a second blast of Force lightning.

Sealed the Catcher inside.

It was a matter of activating a short, pre-programmed sequence to redirect the coolant from one of the two identical adjoining tanks and flood the one he was standing on. Then Carth slumped down, listening to the muffled sound of rushing liquid directly beneath him with a kind of grim satisfaction.

_Exactly to plan_. He gave a shaky laugh. His torn hand throbbed, blood still oozing from it thickly.

A shadow passed over him. "Damn, that was quick. I didn't think you'd make it. Not that I'm complaining or anything, Yolanda . . ."

"Not Yolanda, flyboy." The voice sounded sad.

He blinked at her, dumbfounded. No, not Yolanda.

Bliss.

The expression on her face was grave. As his gaze focussed on her, she faded – a pale yellow ghost, then nothing. The Catcher stepped into view, directly behind where she'd been.

"So who was that in the tank?" Feeling almost resigned, Carth finally broke the silence.

"His name was Ulic, I believe. Same as Quel-Droma. Sadly, the two of them didn't have much else in common."

He grunted noncommittally.

"Easy enough, to make someone see something that's not really there," the Catcher continued. "Especially if there are already similarities between what's there and not. The human mind almost seems to want to fool itself. A protection mechanism designed to preserve our sanity, I suppose."

Carth tried to grasp the fury, but all he felt was numb. "And you just sacrificed him for . . . for . . .?"

"Entertainment? As good a reason as any." A smile. "There is no death. There is the Force. If that is so, then what difference does it make? He is with me now, in any case. You were up to Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety three bottles by the way. If you feel like continuing."

Carth levered himself upright. He still had his vibroblades strapped across his back, and one of his blasters. Suddenly though, he didn't think they'd do much good. "Is it even you here now?"

The Catcher just shrugged, stepping forward, and Carth knew the answer well enough. He could feel the aura of fear that surrounded the man like a cloud.

"It's been a good chase. Shall we finish it?" Vivid orange energy shot from his outstretched hand.

-s-s-

"He thinks that if we get to know one another, we might actually come to like each other. Or at least, to respect each other." Yuthura broke the uncomfortably long silence.

"Does he?" Bastila's response was hardly welcoming. She gave Yuthura only the merest of sidelong glances.

They stood together on the _Rancorous's_ viewing deck, where the ship's former Hutt masters used to watch the command crew carrying out their orders from on high. Outside of the bridge's viewports, the blankness of hyperspace was the only thing visible. Matters with the crippled Republic cruiser had been sorted out – for now – and its surviving crew were now ensconced aboard. To say there was an air of tension was to understate chronically.

"But I think we both know better than that, don't we?" Yuthura pressed ahead, regardless of the lukewarm response.

This time there was no acknowledgement at all.

Yuthura bared her teeth in a variant of a smile. Somewhere inside there was a kind of dark amusement, the tips of her lekku flexing. Mostly though, she was wondering why she felt the need to do this – now especially. In the end, she thought, it came down to similar reasons to why people were compelled to pick at scabs until they bled again.

"We both know what we were far better than _he_ can possibly, for all he once was," she continued. "Even if he still had all the memories of his past absolutely intact, I don't think he could quite understand it the way we do."

This time she did manage to provoke a response, clipped and chill. "What are you talking about?"

Yuthura could sense the uncertainty there though. For a moment, she stared down at the bridge crew as they went about their work. Her bridge crew, theoretically. Her ship too, in a way, if you applied salvage laws to their fullest extrapolation. It wasn't a hugely comforting idea and she pushed it away, concentrating more firmly on Bastila – the conversation she was trying to have.

"Just that _he_ never went through a Sith apprenticeship, however accelerated, and therefore he can't truly appreciate what we have both done. The truly vile, sticky, unpleasantness of some of the acts we have performed – not at arms length or by proxy, but in person."

"I have no wish to talk to you." Yuthura could see that Bastila's cheeks had gone completely pale save for two heightened spots of red.

"Have you ever told anybody? All of it I mean?"

Silence. Then finally, just as Yuthura was ready to admit defeat, a snort. "Have you, Twi'lek?"

Her head tails flexed, uneasily. She half wondered if defeat might not have been better; that she had wanted to fail and have done with it, whilst allowing herself to pretend she had at least made an effort to bridge the gap.

"The first night on Dantooine, after Karath and the Sith fleet departed," she said eventually. "I sat with my old master, overlooking the space where the Enclave had once stood. The ground still glowed from the turbo laser bombardment. You could feel the heat still hanging in the air. I told him everything then."

Yuthura could feel Bastila's eyes upon her then, though she didn't look round at the other woman. It was still painful. Some wounds, perhaps, didn't ever fully heal.

"No," she amended at length, correcting herself with an angry little flick of her lekku. "Not told. Poured it all out on his head. Threw it in his face, and used it like a weapon. The only weapon I had left to me. I wanted to show him exactly how despicable I was and make him hate me utterly. To cast me down into damnation and turn his back on me forever." The words became barely audible. "So much easier to accept that than kindness you know you can't possibly deserve."

Bastila made a quiet sound that might have been an affirmative. Or it might have been something else entirely.

"I think I hated him when he refused to turn away from me. I . . ." She broke off and took a deep breath. She was losing track of what she was trying to achieve. "I certainly understand one of the reasons why Jolee left the Order when they failed to punish him in the manner he thought he should have been. If you can't find anyone else to punish you, then the only thing left is to face yourself and try to accept what you are. And I think that can be the hardest, cruellest punishment of all."

The silence that fell between them was very different in quality this time. Eventually Bastila cleared her throat. She sounded slightly shaky. "And is there a point to any of that?"

Yuthura turned slowly and looked at her, their eyes meeting for the first time. "Only, I suppose, that I know Malak would not have accepted your acquiescence simply from his torture of you, no matter how much gain it brought him. To become his apprentice, he would have required you to bind yourself to him utterly, and do things that, in your heart, you knew there was no possible way back from."

"And what?" Bastila sounded almost incredulous – contemptuous. "You, of all people, seek to use that against me?"

"No." It came out as a snap – almost vicious. "That is the last thing I seek. Because I know that you know exactly the same things about me. About what I am, and the things that I have done." She felt her lekku contract almost convulsively. "And because of what we know about each other, and what we are, we can perhaps never truly become friends. But the last thing we should seek to be here is enemies."

Bastila said nothing.

Yuthura took a steadying breath and started to turn away. It had been worth a shot, at least. Even if it did prove entirely counterproductive.

"Wait."

Yuthura stopped; looked back at her again.

The words that followed were almost a monotone – toneless and dead. "Malak . . . showed me the darkside, like showing me my own reflection in a mirror. He used it on my body, over and over, until I had learned to understand every single power he called upon intimately through observation and experience. I thought I was being clever . . . staying calm, and learning how to turn his own weapons against him. What could be greater strength than that? But now I see . . . I see that was exactly what he wanted in the first place. And once he was confident I had learned everything well enough, he allowed me to escape my chains. A perfect demonstration of the Sith Code in practical form."

Listening, Yuthura tasted something sour in the back of her mouth. Watching Bastila's frozen profile, it struck her how terribly young the other woman was. Young in body at least.

"The other Sith in the Rakatan temple responded to my escape as if it was genuine. I don't believe that Malak had warned them otherwise. When they tried to stop me, I used all the new power I had learned – the power I could feel surging inside me – to annihilate them utterly. I drank their screams and painted the walls with their blood and entrails. Charred their flesh to ash. I revelled in it. It was joy. It sang to me in my veins."

Bastila paused, as if for breath. Her voice, having risen, became quieter again, once more void of emotion. "And as I was about to cross the threshold and leave the Temple behind me, Malak appeared, blocking my way. He congratulated me on passing my final test, and as I lashed out at him with all my hate and anger, he dismantled me – made me scream like I had made the other Sith scream, until something in my throat broke and I could make no sound at all. I collapsed before him with no strength left to even move, and then he promised to teach me the power I needed to in time destroy even him.

"I accepted eagerly, because I saw suddenly how I could betray him utterly, and have everything I ever wanted. How I could make everything in the universe right again."

After a moment had passed, Yuthura started to open her mouth.

Bastila cut her off. "No, I don't want your sympathy. I don't want your words. Like you say, we understand each other well enough."

Yuthura simply nodded. After a moment she turned away again, knowing that pressing any further right now would just undo anything that might have been accomplished – if anything actually had been.

She made it as far as the doors leading off the viewing platform this time, before Bastila spoke again, unexpectedly.

"So why did you seduce him?" There was an echo of pain in the words, both accusation and quiet pleading for understanding.

"What makes you think that was how it happened?" Yuthura responded finally, despite her initial intent to ignore the question and keep on walking.

"Because . . ." There was a hesitation, and when Bastila spoke again the words were not the ones Yuthura had already been mentally filling in. "Because I know him at least a little, I think, and since he has found out what he really is, he would not choose to inflict himself on someone else."

_Well then. _She almost smiled, but held it back, knowing that it would be misinterpreted. "Perhaps he has changed since the two of you parted. Or perhaps you didn't know him quite as well as you thought you did. It didn't happen quite that way."

Bastila's lips compressed to the point they almost seemed to disappear, but at length she nodded. Yuthura was surprised to sense a glimmer of genuine acceptance of her words. Some of them, at least. "And the two of you could not have . . . waited. Until all of this was done with . . ."

"Before succumbing to our base lusts?"

"No. That isn't what I meant." She sounded almost pained. "But . . ."

Yuthura stifled a sigh. "How could we have been so undisciplined as to let feelings and personal matters intrude at a time like this?"

Those spots of colour were back on her cheeks. "If you want to put it like that. Then yes."

Yuthura almost turned and walked away without speaking, but in the end paused. "Because it is always a time like this. There never is an after. It doesn't miraculously change and get better, and the universe _never_ stops to accommodate you. All any of us has is now, so unless you're an utter fool you use it how you can."

Then she did turn and walk away. When it came to it, the only future she could see for either herself or Tamar – even if everything they planned worked absolutely perfectly – was a place of honour at their own execution.

There _was_ no after, let alone a happy one.

-s-s-

Carth's back arched so violently that he almost snapped his spine. He could taste blood in his mouth. It was just about the only thing that held him connected to reality.

That orange energy faded, the third crackling arc of it in rapid succession. He flopped about on the metal walkway like a landed fish, random misfiring nerve impulses overwhelming any semblance of conscious control. It felt like he'd been burned away inside, and now all that was left behind was an empty husk. It seemed to have sucked away his will too, although on the upside, the dull apathy he was left with blunted the fear that the Catcher wore like a cloak.

He watched as the Catcher sauntered easily towards him, unhurriedly lithe. An inner voice screamed at him to move, but that seemed distant and unimportant. The only difference it would make was which precise second he died in . . .

_I didn't realise that the Republic's greatest war hero was such a coward._ It sounded like Bliss's voice, scathing and distorted by anger. _Die now and I promise that my entire remaining purpose will be to make your afterlife the purest hell._

_Yeah? Don't see you helping much here. _He tried to move – to refute the voice. In the end though, it was the Catcher's smile that galvanised him as the Sith assassin stopped directly in front of him – the gleeful mocking whiteness of it.

His blaster was still in his hand. How, Carth wasn't quite sure. He scarcely remembered the point he'd even drawn it.

_Aim. Visualise the target. Smoothly squeeze the trigger . . ._

Except no. The Catcher's lightsaber blade would intercept it, and deflect it straight back, like on the bridge in Calius saj Leeloo.

"It will be easier for you if you just accepted it, Carth. So much easier."

He could almost feel the Catcher's thoughts then, as if they were joined, mind to mind. The sheer bizarre alienness of the sensation was utterly terrifying.

Eyes refocusing, he yanked the blaster barrel upwards, aiming over and to the left of the Catcher's head. As he pulled the trigger, an incandescent bolt of red energy struck a pipe emblazoned with yellow and black warning symbols dead on.

The pipe ruptured explosively just as the Catcher twisted round, warned belatedly via the Force . . .

And because of that, he took a blast of high-pressure superheated steam directly to the face.

The resulting cry of pain was shrill and shattering, somehow in itself laden with the Force. Carth's vision split and fractured like the facets of a broken mirror. He fired repeatedly at the various fragmentary Catchers that flitted in front of him, scrambling backwards on the seat of his pants as he did so.

"Very. Clever." The voice was distorted, almost animal. It came from every direction at once.

The primal rage in it was strangely satisfying. It was the first time Carth had heard the bastard lose control. When his vision solidified back into a semblance of normality, there was no one in front of him at all.

Heart thudding percussively, he forced himself to rise. Raw pain stabbed through the palm of his torn hand as he accidentally put pressure on it. His legs felt like jelly and he staggered forward a couple of steps before he managed to catch himself.

There was no trace of the Sith whatsoever. His ears strained, trying to pick out the distinctive note of lightsaber hum, but the only sound he could make out was the continuous gurgling and clanking of the coolant tank beneath him.

Grimacing, he struggled to calm a rising sense of agoraphobic panic. His current position was far, far too exposed, with two many routes of approach. The vast, cathedral-like space around him held one of eight identical fusion reactors that provided power to Kamari station. Ribbed walls curved to form a vast dome high above his head.

The sheer sense of scale was in itself almost overwhelming.

Coming to a decision, Carth started forwards across a narrow and precarious bridge spanning a deep trench between the curve of coolant tank and wall. He needed to get out of there; somewhere he could get his back to a wall, and the Catcher could only come at him from one direction. Somewhere he could take stock and make a stand.

And Yolanda would be coming from that direction. He had to find her before . . .

Without warning, his legs gave way beneath him.

He staggered sideways, dry heaving painfully as his stomach sought to evacuate contents that were already gone. The same burning, Force-induced fever as he'd felt earlier turned his thoughts to instant mush, his hip banging hard against the bridge's railing. Suddenly, balance gone, he swayed forward over an alarming drop . . .

The Catcher's thrown lightsaber missed him by a matter of centimetres. Instead of slicing and cauterising flesh, it cut deeply into the supports of the flimsy walkway. There was an alarming shriek of rending metal, and abruptly, the bridge fell away beneath Carth's feet.

Dimly he was aware of sliding rapidly down an ever-steepening slope, jolting and bouncing all the way. He tried to grab onto something, but the surge of pain as his torn hand tried to arrest his slide almost made him black out. And then, suddenly, there was only empty air beneath him.

Somehow, the drop managed to be both longer and shorter than he anticipated. He tried to roll as the wall curved back underneath him again, but the impact blasted the breath from his body anyway. There was another vicious spike of agony as his leg twisted beneath him, then he was tumbling head over heels, bouncing hard . . .

And finally, as the curve of the wall levelled into floor, he came to a thudding halt.

For a time he just lay there on his back, gulping in an effort to draw breath into his lungs. Almost everything seemed to hurt to one degree or another. It was an entire universe of multifarious and varied pains.

_Get up. Get up. _

_Go away. You're dead._

_You can't lose consciousness now, you useless bastard! He's still coming_.

"Just shut up," he told the voice irritably, not realising that he'd answered it aloud.

A groan of agony wrenched from his lips as he tried to put weight on his injured leg. The burning edge of the fever seemed to be falling away though, almost as if the pain of the injury worked to clear his thoughts.

His eyes alighted on his dropped blaster, about a dozen metres away. Remarkably, it still looked to be intact. Just beyond it was a maintenance hatch. He'd come through that way before, when he'd still believed he was leading the Catcher into a trap.

Grimly, leaving bloody palm prints to mark his way, Carth started forward in an awkward, lurching semi-crawl.

Somewhere behind him, he heard a gentle thud. He didn't look round though. He didn't need to.

He could feel the Catcher's presence the same way he could feel the pain of his battered body. There was no shred of amusement in the Sith now – just steely focus.

It wasn't a game anymore.

Perhaps that was, in its own way, a triumph of a sort.

-s-s-

Yolanda whirled at the quiet humming noise. She managed to hold back from pulling the trigger though, registering that the glow the lightsaber gave off was green rather than red.

"You ought to be more careful, Doctor," she said finally, breaking the silence. The acoustics of the reactor chamber made her voice sound small and odd. "Sneaking up on someone like that can prove dangerous."

"My apologies." Ellas spoke calmly, inclining his head in a manner she suspected was meant to be apologetic.

She lowered the blaster pistol. "Since you made it this far, I gather you have some means of tracking him."

There was a pause as the Caamasi walked – or glided, as it more closely resembled – towards the central platform on which she stood. "That depends on who you mean by him."

"At this point I'd settle for either." The calmness of her voice was strange. It reflected her inner state, but in a way, she found herself wishing that it didn't. That she wasn't so . . . disconnected. "I think it amounts to more or less the same thing."

Ellas pointed downwards. "The Dark Jedi is somewhere down there, beneath us. He no longer even tries to disguise his Force presence."

Yolanda wasn't certain if that was good or bad. "There's blood." She pointed. "Lightsabers, as a rule, don't inflict wounds that bleed. Can you tell who it belongs to?"

Ellas stepped past her, dropping to his haunches beside the spot she'd indicated. Long, deft fingers trailed lightly through the still tacky smears that covered once-white plasteel.

"Carth," he murmured softly. Then, "I sense a great deal of pain."

"Carth?" Something inside her tightened. The Catcher had called him Carth too. At the time, she'd been too preoccupied to do more than file it away for later reference.

The Caamasi looked up at her, expression solemn. With him, it was always solemn. "Another name, like Valden is. You have many different names too, I believe."

_But none of them is Carth_.

Outwardly, she didn't make an issue of it though. She indicated the fallen bridge. "One or both of them went down there, and not the easy way. There's more blood on the railing. Aside from the obvious, there doesn't appear to be any easy way of following."

"I can lower you."

It took her a moment to realise what he meant. Her doubt must have shown in her expression.

"I may not be a warrior, but that doesn't mean I lack ability in _every_ area."

It wasn't really the doctor's competence or lack thereof that worried her. In the end though, she simply nodded assent. Alternatives were few and far between. And time was even sparser in quantity.

-s-s-

Briefly, Carth started the bottle song inside his head again, before halting again almost immediately. His face twisted in an expression that wasn't entirely pain.

If the only time he tried to shield his thoughts that way was when he had something he desperately wanted to hide, then all he was doing was announcing to anyone prying that he was hiding something. It wasn't like it would take a fraking genius to figure it out . . .

He cast a desperate glance back over his shoulder. Not long now. Not long at all . . .. Part of him was amazed that he'd made it even this far, more than a kilometre through Kamari Station's underbelly of service tunnels, to a storage hold beneath one of the shuttle landing bays. By rights, the Catcher should have had him already, but he seemed content to close in slowly. Steadily.

_Savour the kill_.

Perhaps the bastard could be made to regret his lack of haste. Perhaps the bastard could be made to choke on it . . .

Carth staggered then, falling against the refuelling tank as his leg crumpled yet again, his throat contracting tight. The pain was shattering. Beyond rationality. His teeth ground together, a thin hissing note emerging from between them. It wanted to be a scream.

_Get a grip soldier_. Suddenly he was back in the Mandalorian wars. The jungles of Dxun. Liquid heat and delirium. Green hell . . .. Groaning aloud, he tried to focus on the now and not get sucked in. _Damn it, you coward. You've gone through worse than this before. Get your ass in gear . . ._

The leg almost went again immediately as a fraction of his weight resettled on it. Whether it was broken or he'd simply shredded the knee ligaments was pretty much moot. It simply didn't want to work. Groaning, he wrenched round on the fuel tank's flow release, and more of the thick, highly volatile liquid began to gush out across the deck, joining that from the four other tanks he'd already visited. Dimly, he registered the blood he'd left behind, seeping through the rags wrapping his torn hand.

And then he stopped.

There was no sound. The hum of the lightsaber was drowned out by the gurgling sound of running liquid.

But he knew immediately. _He_ was there, standing directly behind him, watching. There was a seductive sounding, feminine giggle.

Drawing his blaster, Carth turned around slowly. Inside, he felt something plummeting.

"A shame I wasn't a minute or so later. It might have been interesting then."

No response.

"You might even have won."

"Too slow, Carth. Too slow." It was Bliss, right next to his ear. She sounded both regretful and chastising.

He didn't let his focus be distracted from the dark figure in front of him. That smile. Right now, he wasn't sure if even his old hatred of Saul Karath compared to how much he hated that smile. He knew that he would gladly give up just about anything to see it wiped away.

"Look down. What you're standing in." It almost managed to sound calm. The flow of raw shuttle fuel had reached as far as the Catcher's boots. "The fuel mix contains Peragus ore. Cheap. Nasty. You don't waste the good stuff on shuttles." As he spoke, he realised he was grinning. Sanity had decided to take a break. "It burns like nothing else. I wouldn't want to be standing in it with, say, a lit lightsaber. Not when all it takes is a spark."

Of course, he was standing in it too.

The Catcher glanced briefly down, made a soft unreadable noise, then looked up again and inclined his head. "Thank you, Carth. My gratitude for the warning." The lightsaber extinguished with a soft _snap-hiss_.

The blaster came up almost without conscious thought. Carth pulled the trigger smoothly, aiming for the middle of the Catcher's face. It was just about a perfect shot.

Except the Catcher's right hand came across, instantly surrounded by a sheath of charged particles, deflecting it away. It ricocheted wildly, sparking off the plasteel walls. Not quite perfect enough.

Deathly silence. The Catcher's head cocked slightly to one side, listening to something Carth couldn't hear. There was an indulgent chuckle. "Firing blasters right now might be considered even more stupid than using lightsabers."

"You think I care what happens to me?" Carth's response was quietly ferocious. "There's nothing left in my life worth living for. Isn't that what _you_ told me?"

"If you didn't care, Carth, you would have ignited it already." The Catcher took another step forward, further into the expanding pool of liquid. The raw, stinking fuel lapped around his boots. "Blown us both to hell."

_Really here. Not an image. Not a decoy. _Awkwardly, with only one leg to thrust off, Carth launched himself forward.

Awkward or not, his shoulder drove hard into the Catcher's midsection and they both went sprawling over on the deck together in a tangle of limbs, rolling in the spilled fuel.

Carth drove his fists repeatedly into the Catcher's torso – went at it like a vornskyr with a chew toy – drawing on deep, dark reserves of rage and pain until he was barely conscious of what he was doing, overwhelming any opposition by sheer fury and brute force. He slammed the Catcher's skull back against the metal deckplates with crunching force – prepared to do it again, and again . . .

It was like a gigantic fist seizing hold of him and gripping him tight. Suddenly Carth was flying backwards through the air, slamming into the storage hold's back wall.

His vision looped through strange gyrating patterns as he struggled to hold onto consciousness. There was a sensation similar to a Wookiee sitting on his chest and he couldn't draw breath. Just for a moment though, everything stabilized and was clear.

He was outside of the expanding pool of shuttle fuel, having been hurled at least ten metres. The Catcher was still right in its middle, drenched from head to foot, rising slowly and remorselessly, grinning even now.

He still had his blaster. Somehow, Carth realised that the weapon was still clenched tight in one fist.

He aimed at the ground right in front of the Catcher's feet. Pulled the trigger.

The wall of flame that leapt up was bright blue. To Carth's dazed senses it was one of most strangely beautiful things he had ever seen. From somewhere in its bright, ferocious heart, he heard laughter ringing out.

Then the rapidly expanding outer edge of the explosion caught hold of him, picking him up and slamming him back against the wall again, even harder than before. Dimly, distantly, he could feel raging heat . . .. From somewhere far, far away he could still hear that uproarious, almost hysterical laughter, even over the roaring of the flames.

Mixed in with it was the sound of a multitude of voices, screaming like the damned.

Fade out to nothing.

-s-s-

"I have to confess I find this a somewhat . . . strange place to conduct a meeting." Arathor Dann's voice was light, but it was obvious, even to the most casual of listeners, that that was entirely forced.

Morrigance stopped beside the Miraluka, leaning against the railing. Beneath her feet, she could hear the sound of rushing water. The circle of dim light surrounding them both didn't stretch very far. Certainly not far enough to illuminate even a fraction of the echoingly vast space around them.

"Worried that I might be setting you up for the traditional Exchange style execution? A swim wearing plastocrete boots?" Her tone matched his for lightness, though there was no feeling in it.

"It had crossed my mind. I can't imagine that you're pleased with me."

They were thousands of metres below the surface of Coruscant, standing on a walkway above one of the immense underground reservoirs that supplied both water and hydroelectric power to the teeming megacity high above their heads.

"Don't concern yourself Arathor. My schedule is a busy one. I could not afford to take time out of it to arrange so . . . elaborate a punishment. I simply happen to have other business here."

Arathor, of course, knew enough not to ask what that business was. She could sense his curiosity clearly enough though.

"I assume that you wouldn't seek a personal meeting simply to inform me of the lack of progress in your efforts to apprehend Hulas?" she prompted when he didn't say anything.

"The Rodian has proved . . . elusive. If nothing else, that one has very strong survival instincts. Estray continues to conduct the search in my stead, and I believe she has some interesting leads. But yes, you are correct. This is not directly about Hulas."

He paused, as if for some kind of response, but then cleared his throat uncomfortably, realising that she almost certainly wasn't in the mood for small talk. "We tracked Hulas to a meeting on Nawathwai, in Bothan space."

Morrigance knew Nawathwai. Her one time boss, Drevon Rae had run business through there when she'd worked for the Exchange. All those lifetimes ago.

"Hulas never showed up," Arathor continued. "Saw us coming at a guess. The person he was meeting wasn't quite so observant though."

She could sense the excitement in him then, most unusual for Arathor, so allowed herself to indulge him. "And who exactly was this person?"

His head turned towards her, blank eyes concealed behind a strip of cloth. "It was Revan."

Something inside her tightened. "Tell me."

-s-s-

"Carth, huh?"

He blinked slowly, briefly surprised, though he couldn't quite manage to grasp what he was surprised about. It seemed like he was disconnected from his body, floating in a warm, shallow pool. It was pleasant. He didn't want to leave the pool.

A face hovered above him. It took him a moment to put a name to it. _Yolanda_. It was surrounded by blue light, except the blue light wasn't real . . .. He struggled for a moment to place the blue light, but couldn't manage it. The effort disturbed his floating anyway.

Something else disturbed his floating even more. To her he was supposed to be Valden. "Not Carth . . ." His voice seemed to come from an entirely separate galaxy.

"Shh. Don't try to talk." Yolanda's attention shifted to someone else close by. He realised he was on some kind of trolley, or perhaps a stretcher, being pushed along. "Can't you do anything else for him?"

Doctor Ellas. The Caamasi. Carth recognised the other person only belatedly. He looked rather the worse for wear.

". . . disconnected him from the pain. I'm sure he looks a lot worse than he feels. The more visible injuries will take time though. He needs a prolonged spell of recuperation in a kolto tank."

Carth didn't catch Yolanda's muttered reply. "Valden," he insisted weakly, feeling that he couldn't let the matter pass.

"Then tell me. Why does everyone else call you Carth?" The skin around her eyes looked taut and bruised. She looked worried. The blue light had faded.

"'s a popular name on Telos. Like Han on Corellia. Used to be . . . good alias." He felt rather pleased with that.

"It's popular everywhere now." Her smile didn't look quite right. "Even non-humans are naming their children Carth these days, though some haven't quite grasped that it's supposed to be a boy's name."

"Can't use Carth anymore. Attracts far too much attention . . ."

"I told you to hush. You're hurt. You need to lie back and relax."

Part of him was inclined to argue, but that seemed a lot of effort on the whole. And floating was so much _nicer_, in the end. Briefly, he wondered who the third person, walking between Ellas and Yolanda, was. They hadn't spoken.

"You're sure about this?" Carth distantly held Ellas saying.

"You want to try and make it all the way across the station with him like this? Trust me. It's our best chance. Probably our only chance."

Carth couldn't quite work out what Yolanda and Ellas were talking about. Neither could he make himself care. He attempted to focus on the person walking between them. They seemed to be surrounded by a flicking corona of blue.

"You can get past the launch codes?"

"It's a Czerka made Type-D disguised warship. Standard infiltration vessel, currently in use by Sith forces among many others. Believe me when I say that the launch codes won't be a problem."

There was a pause. Carth's vision was slowly clearing. He thought that the person standing between them might be a Twi'lek. Those looked like lekku, anyway . . .

"Something about this feels wrong."

"Is that the Force talking, Doctor, or just your own doubts?"

Carth didn't hear any reply to that. His vision had just sharpened to diamond sharp clarity, and suddenly his heart was trying to batter its way out through his sternum.

It was Bliss.

Once yellow skin was now charred black, save were it had cracked and split, rawly oozing clear fluids. Her eyes had cooked and changed colour, red-pink blood blisters looking down at him through cloudy white irises. He could glimpse flashes of her teeth through one perforated cheek.

The blue glow came from the fact that she still smouldered in the shuttle fuel – a dancing corona of pale, centimetre high flame.

"Why did you burn me, Carth?" she mouthed. Those dreadful eyes bored into him, unrelenting. "Why do you hate me so much?"

_The Catcher_.

The Catcher was still alive. Somehow, despite the flames. He tried to speak – to warn – but he couldn't force air past his constricted throat. And suddenly everything was spinning.

Fade out again.

-s-s-

The wrist blade made a soft, unpleasant noise as it retracted from its newfound sheath of flesh. Expressionless, Yolanda shoved the Sith pilot out of his seat, where he crumpled in a boneless heap, joining the rest of the freshly butchered bridge crew.

She leaned forwards, wiping blood splatter from the instruments with the sleeve of her jacket. It took no more than a moment for her to activate the back door built into the control systems.

For all her earlier expressed confidence to Ellas, there was a very definite sense of relief when it actually worked. The mechanism had been added to the systems of all Sith vessels to provide emergency access and control to top-level assets. It wasn't the kind of thing she'd had much opportunity to put to the test before.

She spoke into the comm. "Brace yourself, doctor. I'm about to blow the emergency docking clamp releases. It could be momentarily uncomfortable."

"Acknowledged." The answering voice sounded vague and distracted.

A few seconds later, a series of sharp jolts vibrated through the disguised warship's hull – explosive bolts detonating in quick succession to set them free of Kamari Station's grasp, drifting free in space. Immediately Yolanda's fingers started to dart over the controls in front of her, initiating the main ignition sequence.

"He's on board."

Ellas's voice over her earpiece made her jolt more violently than the emergency release sequence had. "What?"

"The Dark Jedi. The Catcher. We weren't quick enough. He made it on board before we cut free." The uncharacteristic snap to the Caamasi's words forestalled any questions.

She started to stand up, heart racing. "I'll be there in . . ."

"No. Head to port bay two." Suddenly he really did sound completely different. Decisive. Commanding. A true Jedi Master. "There's some kind of modified attack ship there. Big enough to take about four people. Get Carth from the med bay and get out of here."

Arguments rose, but she bit them back. A sneaking, cynical part of her wondered if he was taking the opportunity to betray them.

"I'll buy you the time you need." His spoke more softly now. Slightly regretful, perhaps. "If you can activate the self destruct, I'd do it now."

She couldn't. Although she had the required permission levels to access the necessary codes, it would take two separate crewmembers to successfully initiate the sequence. Crewmembers that she'd killed.

She told Ellas as much.

There was a tiny pause before he answered again. "Well, if you can do anything inside the next thirty seconds to disable the controls, then do it. Otherwise I'd advise that you run."

"Doctor . . ." she started.

The tone of command faded from his voice. "If we get the chance we'll . . . we'll talk later. Now please, go."

The comm link shut off, leaving her in silence.

-s-s-

"What have you just done?" The Catcher's voice, emerging from the darkness, was a broken rasp.

Ellas stood firm, bathed in the green light of his saber as he stared at the shadow wrapped figure in front of him. He was surprised to find that the serenity managed to hold back even the surging tides of fear. He was surprised to find that he felt calm and even confident.

"I have freed him from you. Severed the bond you forced on him." Even if he were still defeated, that one thing meant victory. He told himself he was content with that.

The Catcher's answer came in the form of harsh, hissing laughter. He took a dragging step forward. The blackness still clung to him tightly – a living force.

"We do not need to do this anymore. We do not need to fight." Ellas's words were strong and calm. "Let me heal you. Let me soothe your pain."

The figure stopped – tilted its head to one side, as though listening to something that Ellas couldn't hear. "My pain?"

Ellas almost felt pity then. "You have been burned. Badly burned. I can help you, if you let me."

There was more broken laughter. Briefly, Ellas wondered if the Dark Jedi's sanity had cracked entirely.

"Burned? No, no." Suddenly the Catcher's posture had straightened out, his voice losing the rasp and becoming smoothly mellifluous. "Not burned. I learned a lesson from the flames. It is amazing the things that you can learn when you really, really have no other choice."

Ellas suddenly felt cold.

The Catcher extended a hand, and Ellas was aware of the Force being channelled. He stepped back, raising his lightsaber in preparation to defend himself. He could feel his fur prickling uncomfortably, and suddenly serenity seemed a long, long way away.

Bright blue flames burst from the Catcher's fingertips. He trailed his hand back and forth, making those flames dance, seemingly entranced by them and the pale, flickering light they cast. "See? The flames tried to consume me, but I didn't let them. I made them part of me instead." Gleaming white teeth flashed. "They are beautiful, don't you think?"

The serenity fractured entirely then, fear sweeping over Ellas in crashing breakers.

"Now." Ellas couldn't see the Catcher's eyes but he could _feel_ them. Their gaze crawled across him avidly, almost a physical thing – swarming, parasitic insects burrowing through his fur. "You have taken something from me that I value, Jedi. For that I intend to extract full restitution."

The Catcher's lightsaber ignited. Its glare finally peeled back the shadows around him, and showed his face in its entirety.

It was smooth, unscarred by fire. Unbroken skin gleamed darkly.

Then the Catcher moved, like lightning. Like living flame.

-s-s-

Yolanda heard the beep that indicated an arriving transmission a moment before she hit the controls of the Tukata class fighter-bomber and made the leap to hyperspace.

As the star lines faded, she let out a breath, allowing herself to slump back in the pilot's seat. They'd made it.

The transmission beeped at her again, insistent.

A recorded message then, rather than a live incoming call. She was going to ignore it and check on Carth – odd to think that he wasn't Valden anymore – although the strong likelihood was that he was still off floating somewhere in a state of drugged out bliss, entirely unaware of anything around him. A glance at the ident tag gave her pause though.

Dr Ulvol Ellas. She sighed softly, then hit the control to play the message back. He deserved to be heard at least.

It wasn't Ellas's voice that spoke to her though. Her breath contracted sharply.

"Warm felicitations to you, Carth. You seem in quite the hurry to get away." The words were followed by a quiet giggle that set Yolanda's teeth on edge.

She grimaced, her hand moving to stop the message playing back. Something stayed her though.

"I thought you'd like to know. Your friend, Dr Ellas, has been persuaded to . . . join with me. I should thank you for helping to introduce us. He really is a most . . . fascinating person. Let me assure you, I will not waste the knowledge he has so generously bequeathed to me."

Yolanda didn't know why she kept listening, but she did.

"You may come to form the impression that the bonds between us have been severed. You would be mistaken. Our connection is not defined purely by the Force."

She muttered something unflattering beneath her breath.

"Should vengeance for Dr Ellas and dearest Bliss not be sufficient reason for you to seek me out – and I'm _sure_ it will be – I'd like to propose a race between us. I've decided to head for Coruscant, and there Carth, I intended to track down your son."

_Frak._

"If you can get to Coruscant and find me before I find him, however, I shall generously allow you to volunteer to take his place."

There was a pause in the playback.

"Be seeing you, Carth. Do try not to dawdle."


	18. Questionable Judgment

**18. Questionable Judgment**

Night on Coruscant wasn't remotely dark. The illumination simply came from the city itself rather than from the sky.

An endless vista of artificial lights formed a dazzlingly bright backdrop as Senator Oris Gallavon paced back and forth in front of the windows of his apartment. Briefly, he paused his perambulating, his gaze moving back to the centre of the room and the hologram projected there.

"So, Judge Ikaasa, do you have an answer for me yet?"

The hologram showed a rather aged Caamasi, tall and stately, elegant in formal robes despite the late hour. "I have, Senator, although I suspect it is not the answer that you are looking for from me."

"Oh?" Oris's expression remained neutral, though not without considerable effort.

He felt his wife's touch as a soothing phantom of a caress; heard her whisper in his head as something other than words, reminding him of the need for clarity. The tightness of anger in his chest reluctantly unwound a notch.

Judge Ikaasa's expression was grave, although that hardly constituted a surprise. Grave, solemn, or serene seemed to encompass a Caamasi's normal emotional range.

"I am minded to find that the arguments presented by the late Master Vrook Lamar on behalf of the Jedi Council are substantiated by legal fact, and to let that be an end to the matter." Ikaasa's words were strangely distant and nebulous to the Senator's hearing.

At the quiet but insistent urging of his wife, Oris put the glass he was holding down on a nearby table before his convulsively tightening grip could shatter it. Pressure throbbed behind one of his eyeballs, as if something was trying to force its way out. "You're telling me that you seriously believe that shambolic mess of dissembling, evasion and arse-covering, Judge Ikaasa? Or did I mishear you somehow?"

There was a noticeable pause.

"I suspect from your reaction, Senator, that you heard me perfectly well."

Oris started pacing again, more rapidly than before. The pressure behind his eye was getting worse, and his wife's calming presence seemed to be fading just when he needed it most. "Explain your conclusion."

The Caamasi made a noise that might have been a sigh. Oris looked round at him sharply. "A draft report will be delivered to you first thing in the morning, Senator."

"Nevertheless, I would still like to hear it from you _now_."

After a marked hesitation, Ikaasa finally inclined his head. He seemed decidedly unhappy. "I will take this on a point by point basis, if I may." He raised a hand, grasping one fingertip and looking rather like a lecturing schoolteacher as he did so. "Firstly – currently waylaid Senate Bills not withstanding – it is absolutely undeniable under both Republic civil and military law, that for the period in question, sole jurisdiction over the matter under discussion belonged the Jedi Council of the time."

Oris glared at him. There was a steady throbbing in his temples, and he could tell already that it was going to be a bad one. The thought terrified part of him. "I think you'll find that the actions of Darth Revan and Malak had a rather wider impact than simply upon the Jedi Order, Judge Ikaasa."

"I _am_ aware of this, Senator." If anything, the Judge's expression managed to look even more grave. "Nevertheless, I must restrict myself to matters of law, and not to emotive responses. And here the law is absolutely clear and unambiguous. Jurisdiction over matters of the Jedi and the Force belongs to the Jedi Council. Not to either the Republic civil or military authorities."

Oris felt his teeth grinding together. His entire skull was pounding now, and he wished profoundly that his wife could be there in person. It was becoming increasingly difficult to think straight on even the most basic issues without her to guide him gently towards the correct path.

It was easy enough to see the correct path now, of course, but he would feel so much stronger and calmer with her at his side. "But if the Jedi Order refuses to use its jurisdiction appropriately in this matter, as is _clearly_ the case here . . ."

"That brings me onto point two, Senator." The Caamasi held up a second finger alongside the first. "According to the detailed submissions made by the aforementioned Master Vrook Lamar, one Xavious Revan was formally tried by a gathering of the Jedi Council, and found guilty of multiple counts of crimes against sentience. It is, as I'm sure you're aware Senator, a fundamental tenet of Republic law that an individual may not be sentenced for the same crime twice."

Oris struggled to keep himself from snarling at the judge. _This _man_ we are talking about is a monster. A rabid animal, which needs to be tracked down and destroyed . . ._

If the law could not see that, then the law needed altering . . .

When he did speak again, he heard his own voice as if it belonged to a third person. "I believe there are clauses in the legislation you mention. Clauses which state that a trial can only be considered valid if it is heard before an impartial, legally recognised court, and that any sentence resulting from such trial must be fully commensurate and appropriate with regards to existing Republic statutes."

Increasingly, legal subtleties made Oris's head hurt. In fact, pretty much _everything_ made his head hurt. Right now, it was spinning out of control, the brilliant lights of Coruscant's skyline blurring into a single, amorphous glowing blob.

_Where are you, Maura? I . . . I need you._

A third finger was raised. Oris struggled to focus on it.

"In this instance, Senator, I am entirely satisfied that all of the relevant provisos have been met. Xavious Revan was found guilty, and a capital sentence was handed down and carried out."

"A capital sentence?" Oris echoed, nearly stupefied.

"Full mind wipe. A measure that still _technically_ exists upon the statute books, even if in practice it is not applied." The tone of the Judge's voice made his distaste clear. "Do I need to add that a mind wipe is regarded under law as being exactly equivalent to the death penalty, and that as a consequence, Xavious Revan no longer exists as a legal entity? The persona of Tamar De'Nolo documented as occupying that particular body is regarded as an _entirely_ different person under current Republic legislation, and therefore cannot be held legally accountable for any actions carried out by the prior personality."

Oris let loose a harsh and barking laugh that was nothing at all to do with humour. "Please tell me you're joking, Judge Ikaasa. Because that has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

From the abrupt stiffening of his posture and flattening of his ears, the Judge definitely wasn't joking. "You asked me for legal advice, Senator. I have given it. There is absolutely no legal basis for charging the man now known as Tamar De'Nolo for the crimes of Xavious Revan. Not in person, and especially not in absentia, as you are seeking. By my assessment, they are legally separate individuals, regardless of any public perception on the matter."

Oris snorted, struggling for composure. "Judge Ikaasa." He paused, swallowing hard to lubricate his throat. "It is common knowledge that Revan suffered brain damage in an assault by his former apprentice. No mind-wipe ever took place, and certainly not as any punishment ordained by the Jedi Council. Do you _remotely_ believe that they would allow such a punishment to be inflicted upon one of their number given their stance on the death penalty? You have been fed a stream of lies and misinformation. No shred of justice has occurred here."

Judge Ikaasa's voice became decidedly chilly. "Senator, I do not deal in matters of common knowledge. I deal in matters of legality and fact."

"And by your own words, you are clearly not in full possession of the facts of this case."

"I assure you, Senator, the events as you describe fit satisfactorily with events as described in the Jedi Council's submissions. It is simply a matter of interpretive semantics, and I am happy that the Jedi Council's interpretation stands up to full legal scrutiny."

"This is _utterly_ ridiculous."

"I am sorry you feel that way, but even in your own words, you acknowledge that Revan incurred catastrophic brain damage. As a consequence, a new personality with new memories was created in his body. Unusual, to be sure, but whether that was done as punishment, or out of some sense of either need or compassion, is to my mind largely irrelevant. Whatever the Jedi Council's motives, even if they are not solely as stated, I would still maintain that Tamar De'Nolo stands squarely as a separate legal entity to Xavious Revan."

"This new persona is simply a convenient fiction, invented by the Jedi Order as a belated sop to gloss over their heinous errors of judgement. Are you truly saying that you are satisfied by what _they_ say?"

"I am as satisfied as I can be, given the lack of available firsthand witnesses." Judge Ikaasa sounded decidedly impatient now, his greying fur bristling visibly. "The Jedi records of the procedure are nothing if not extensive, and have been independently assessed – as my report will cover."

_How the hell can you be so blind, you pompous idiot? _Oris stopped pacing again. "Let us say that you're correct. Have you even considered the possibility of Revan's old personality re-emerging? What then?"

The Judge continued to look exasperated. "I have spent some time looking into the historical records regarding mind wipes, Senator. I have also sought out much expert advice. And I have yet to find any recorded instance of a mind recovering from the kind of damage we are talking about in this case. Any failures of this procedure – of which historically, there were _many_ – always left the recipient of the mind wipe in a permanent and irretrievable vegetative state."

The pressure was almost unbearable now. It made Oris want to scream. Dimly he listened to himself speaking, wondering how he even shaped the words. "Pardon me if I am more inclined towards scepticism, Judge Ikaasa. Unlike you, I have seen firsthand the likely consequences if any part of your assessment proves to be incorrect. I don't know about you, but I for one am not willing to gamble with that amount of lives again."

He realised that his breath was coming far too quickly – that he was sweating – and tried to calm himself.

"Senator, I understand your very personal interest in this matter. Honestly I do." The placating tone was maddening. Oris could feel his teeth grinding together again. Every single heartbeat was like a hammer blow pounding into his skull.

"And you have my profoundest sympathies," Ikaasa continued. "But would not the Republic's interests be best served by laying this matter to rest? Those with direct involvement in the bombing of Telos are now dead, and those with overarching responsibility are, legally speaking, also dead. Would we not all be better served by seeking to draw the poison from the situation rather than further inflaming it?"

"Not while that _thing_ still walks and breathes." The words came before Oris realised what he was saying. He saw Ikaasa flinch.

"I am sorry Senator, but I truly think we should end this conversation. Emotions are becoming rather fraught, and it isn't doing either of us any favours."

_Fraught, you bastard? Fraught? _He felt the phantom caress of Maura's hand again then, briefly easing the pressure in his skull. For once, he didn't allow it to totally soothe him though, concentrating on maintaining his rage. The rage was right; necessary. "I wonder what the judiciary is coming to. All I have heard from you is a string of legal niceties, with nary a mention of justice. If the law does not serve the will of the people it is designed to protect, then what is it truly worth?"

That bit home. Oris almost smiled to see the Judge's discomfort.

"The law is not simply a tool you can manipulate to gain the outcome you desire, Senator. And justice and . . . retribution are not to be confused for the same thing."

Oris's retort died as he heard Maura's voice again – felt her presence, close to him. _There is more than one way to skin a Cannock, my love._

_Yes. Yes._

He coughed; cleared his throat. "So you say there is no legal basis for trying Tamar De'Nolo for his crimes as Revan. Perhaps, you are correct. Perhaps there isn't." His tone there made his own thoughts very clear though. "But there remains ample basis for trying him on the basis of the crimes he most definitely has committed in his . . . current guise."

It tasted like ashes to give way even that much. Maura's feather-light caress stroked across his brow. It was a struggle to hold back visible shakes.

Judge Ikaasa frowned. "Undeniable. However, I have certain reservations about the conduct of the investigation surrounding the killing of the Jedi Council. In the current climate I am definitely not minded to further provoke things by ordering a trial to in his absence."

"He's a fugitive from justice, damn it . . ."

"As, sadly, are a lot of other people. Usually we try to catch them before moving on to the trial stage. I suggest that you pay more mind to apprehending him, Senator. Or come back to me when he is still a fugitive in six months time, when I might be moved to reconsider the proposal."

Oris almost growled. The pain in his skull was near to blinding now. "Need I remind you, Judge Ikaasa, that you are appointed to your position by the Senate? You can be removed from that position just as easily, and someone more inclined towards cooperation selected in your stead."

The Caamasi's fur flattened. "That is your prerogative, I'm sure Senator. I think you will find my Supreme Court colleagues of like mind, however. Now, I will bid you good night, and hope that next time we speak may be in rather cooler temper."

With that, the hologram vanished.

Abruptly all the strength seemed to depart from Oris Gallavon's body at once. He barely made it as far as the nearest chair before folding up. Distantly he could hear his wife's voice, though the pain in his skull was getting worse and worse rather than better, as it usually did in her presence.

_Don't be disheartened, my love._ As he closed his eyes, he tired to imagine her smile, gently reassuring. He couldn't manage it though. All he could see was a burned, near fleshless skull. He could feel tears sliding down his cheeks.

_We both knew that he was likely to prove . . . uncooperative. I'm sure things will work out for the best. In fact, I'm sure circumstances are arranging themselves even now._

"If . . . if you say so . . . my dearest one." Maura had always been an optimist. The pain was too bad for him to smile.

_I do say so. Now, I'm sorry Oris, I know you don't like me doing this, but I must leave you again for a time. I know I can trust you to do what's necessary without me._

"Wait . . . Wait!" Suddenly he was frantic – terrified by the prospect of being alone again. He could feel her dwindling and struggled to rise and pursue her; persuade her to stay with him.

Except his body failed him, and he collapsed weakly onto his hands and knees in the deep-pile carpet.

Her presence dwindled entirely away to nothing.

It was as if she had taken a part of him with her – the only part that was worth anything anymore. Violent shudders wracked him as he cradled his head in his arms, rocking gently back and forth.

The pain and pressure didn't subside though. It didn't relent. In fact, it intensified.

After a time Senator Oris Gallavon began to scream.

-s-s-

"I thought I should get in touch. There are circumstances you need to know about."

The Tukata class fighter-bomber had dropped out of hyperspace after its initial frantic leap to escape Kamari Station. Now it sat somewhere in the middle of the interstellar void, systems powered down to present the minimum possible sensor signature to anything that might have been out there looking for them.

It was probably an unnecessary precaution. Probably.

As she spoke, Yolanda's hands darted rapidly across the control surface in front of her, programming the navicomp with their next destination. Compartmentalising and splitting her thought processes was something that had, over the years, become second nature.

"Speak," the response eventually came, crackling and distorted. There was no hint of emotion in it, but then, there hardly ever was. Not now.

"You asked me to keep an eye on Valden Mayer. Well, like we both thought, his name's not Valden."

"No. It's Carth Onasi."

The movements of Yolanda's fingers faltered almost imperceptibly.

"Your suggestion of running his holo-scan against Republic fleet personnel records paid off," the voice continued. "Appropriate contingencies have been arranged."

_Whatever that means_. As she continued to type, Yolanda suddenly felt deeply uncomfortable. "Well, that's just by the by. The meat of my news concerns the Catcher. He's on his way to Coruscant. I thought you'd appreciate a heads up."

There was a pause where all Yolanda heard from the other end of the commlink was static.

Then: "Do you have any idea as to why?"

Yolanda found herself hesitating. "If he is to be believed, he's looking for Onasi's son." As she spoke the words, it felt curiously like an act of betrayal.

"Dustil."

Something about the tone of the voice caused Yolanda to stop typing altogether, the compartmentalisation process completely breaking down. One of the aforementioned contingencies, at a guess. Briefly, she closed her eyes.

She should never have allowed Kamari to happen. It was just more complication, when there was complication enough to begin with. Grimacing, she shook her head. "I have a recording of the message that the Catcher sent to Carth. At the moment Carth's still unconscious and hasn't heard it." Her voice remained carefully neutral.

"Play it for me, please."

Yolanda did so. It was a struggle to maintain any hint of calm and composure as that creepily mellifluous voice repeated its all too familiar words. This time, she had the uncomfortable feeling that there was an undertone of mocking laughter there, and that somehow the laughter was directed specifically at her.

_Idiot_.

The recording finished. After a moment, the voice asked, "Who is this Dr Ellas mentioned?"

"A former Jedi, grown disillusioned with the Order, I believe. Somewhat dead now, I'd imagine." The cold cynicism in Yolanda's voice didn't match up to her inner landscape in the slightest. She found herself suddenly gritting her teeth together, almost snarling. She was getting too involved.

"'Somewhat', being a particular apposite choice of phrasing in this case," the voice noted.

"What would you like me to do with the message? Delete it?"

The sense that she was betraying him was back. Inwardly, she told herself to get a grip. This was her job. This was where her loyalties had always lain. Nothing had suddenly changed.

"No. Let him hear it." Again, there was a short delay. "Bring him to Coruscant."

The word 'bring' being entirely redundant there, Yolanda thought as her lips twisted in sardonic bitterness. Short of shooting Carth, there was likely going to be no way of her stopping him from that course once he heard the message, even if she'd wanted to.

"Try to intercept the Catcher and keep him occupied," the voice said, almost as if it wasn't asking her to do the equivalent of turning back the tide. "The timing of this is . . . unfortunate. It will be several days at least before I can intervene in person. I'll make available what resources I can in the meantime and alert the network to your needs."

_Just fraking great_. She could feel her nails digging into the palm of her hand as her fist clenched tight. The whole idea of voluntarily putting herself in that freak's line of fire again . . .. Suddenly a career change was looking a more and more appealing option. "Acknowledged."

"Was there anything else?"

"No, that's all of it." Yolanda found herself almost laughing as she said this, though any humour in it would have been venomously tainted.

"Then you have my thanks, and I wish you luck. I'll be in touch." With that, the commlink went dead.

Yolanda sat back and sighed, and tried to arrange the details of the conversation she'd just had inside her head – pick out any hidden meanings and subtleties she might have missed the first time through.

She gave up quickly.

Strange really. They'd known each other for more than fifteen years now, since her early days on Nar Shaddaa, when both of them had worked together for Drevon Rae. They'd even been close friends once, until Rae had finally and inevitably managed to get himself killed. Yet for all that, it seemed like she now knew her less well than she ever had.

Perhaps it really _was_ time for a career change.

Yolanda shook the thought away, and went back to plotting the pattern of their hyperspace leaps. First, she had to concentrate on seeing this through to its end.

-s-s-

Zaalbar caught the guard a moment before his unconscious, armour-plated form could clatter to the floor. Scooping him up as casually as if he was a child's discarded doll, the Wookiee slung the limp Nikto easily over one immensely broad shoulder.

"Over here, Zee," Mission hissed back at him from a nearby doorway. She cast a semi-frantic glance down the length of the corridor. The security cameras would be coming back on line any second . . . "Hurry!"

Yellow lights flickered as the power supply fluctuated. It was something that happened roughly every half a minute or so – each time the randomly nested security circuits switched over to a new pattern, she knew. The surrounding matt-black durasteel appeared to absorb the illumination entirely and there was a profoundly claustrophobic sense of millions of tons of ultra dense metal pressing in from every side. Even she could feel it.

_C'mon, c'mon . . ._

The door closed behind Zaalbar's back with a mechanical murmur. He dumped the Nikto's body in the corner.

Less than half a second to spare. _Far_ too close.

"Damn it, Zee. This is supposed to be a stealth mission." Mission didn't manage to keep the frustration out of her voice, her arms folding tightly across her chest. Dangling free, her lekku curled distractedly. She could feel her heart thumping against her ribcage.

The Wookiee made a quietly mournful noise. "What else would you have had me do, little one?"

She felt so distracted and on edge that, for once, she allowed 'little one' to pass unprotested. "I don't know Zee. I just . . ." She trailed off with a shake of her head.

_I just don't want to screw this up, y'know._ Not after all the trust Tamar had put in her.

"This place is not for me," Zaalbar was murmuring as he set about securing the unconscious Nikto. It was directed as much at himself as anyone, Mission recognised from the tone. "I do not fit these tight metal confines. I feel them squashing in on me all the time." Something that was perhaps a sigh, either of longing or regret. "It has been too long since I felt the wind in my fur. Too long since I felt the rains . . ."

"You're telling me," Mission muttered. In an enclosed space like this one, he was definitely getting rather on the ripe side. "Hold in there, big guy."

Her attention shifted swiftly to T3. The utility droid had already interfaced with the computer terminal built into the far wall and was busily whirring away.

"How we doing?" she asked. It was a struggle to keep the edginess out of her voice.

"Woo-wee-bop," came the rapidly beeped response.

That, at least, was moderately encouraging. The codes that Tamar and Yuthura had retrieved from Darth Auza's data-core still worked. If they hadn't, the game would have been up before they'd even started. "Yeah, well. Keep me up to date, Tee."

Even as the words came out, she was wincing at the tone of her own voice. Far too stressed. Far too strident. _Damn girl, keep this up and you're going to be sounding like Bastila before you know it. __Middle-aged by the time you're twenty . . ._

Her lekku flexed and twitched with the pent-up nervous tension. That was the thing you tended to forget, cooped up for days on end on a spaceship and slowly going insane with boredom. The fun stuff tended to seem that bit more fun retrospectively. After the fact, you tended to gloss over the tense, stressful and downright scary bits.

And being in charge was turning out to be a _lot_ less appealing than it looked from the outside . . .

Pushing those distracting thoughts away, she touched her earpiece, activating her commlink. "Hey there, gramps. Thought you'd like to know. We're in."

"About time," a familiar voice grumbled in response.

There was a brief pause, before Jolee belatedly added: "Gramps? When this is over, you and I are going to have words, girly."

Mission smirked. "Hey, whatever. Gramps."

T3 beeped at her impatiently.

"Erm, anyway, you and Tammy might like to kind of hurry things along a bit at your end. Zee had to take out a guard, which means we've got, say, 'bout half an hour tops before they're onto us."

"Noted. Gramps out."

"Woooo . . ."

_Uh-oh._ The low note T3 let out sounded decidedly ominous. Mission felt something inside her lurch abruptly, then plummet. "What is it, Tee?"

"Woo-beep-woo . . ."

Her returning sense of optimism had just died, stone dead. She hurried across to the utility droid's side, peering at the terminal screen intently.

"Beep-beep-beep!"

It amounted to the equivalent of droid machine code swearing. Mission could feel all of her stomachs turning slow, simultaneous loops. "Here. Let me take a look." Her fingers blurred across the keyboard in front of her.

"Damn. Damn. Damn." She barely heard herself as her eyes flicked across the information displayed in front of her, ignoring Zaalbar's growled query. "Nerfing, nerfing frak."

No matter how many ways she tried to get round it though, she kept running against the same inescapable barrier. There was another security level, below the ones T3 had initially bypassed with the codes.

Unfortunately, the information extracted from the data-core made no mention of this whatsoever. Which presented them with a problem.

"Beep!"

"Yes. Yes, I _know_ you told all me that already," she muttered. Her vision seemed to be doing strange things, and there was a highly unpleasant crawling, skittering sensation inside her. "Frak it!" It was a struggle to keep from lashing out and kicking the console in front of her in sheer frustration.

"Mission? What's happening?"

"Okay, okay. Deep breath. Let's try to stay calm here, everyone." Mission lifted her hands away from the console and tried to breathe normally. "Tee, can you bypass it?"

"Bee-beep-woo."

A breath hissed between her teeth. "_I_ could brute-force it Tee. That wasn't what I meant." She bit down on the rising frustration, struggling to think of something. _Anything_.

The problem was, this whole ship was effectively a high-security vault. By its very nature, it was wrapped in layer upon layer of interconnected protective systems. And as soon as they attempted to brute-force slice their way in, audit logs would trigger enough telltales to light up a Coruscant skyscraper.

Then they'd all be right in the poodoo. "There's _got_ to be something."

"Woo-wee-wop."

"Hah! Wiseass tin can. This isn't funny, you know that?"

"Mission, if there's a problem and we need to tell the others to abort . . ."

_Abort. Fail. _

_Damn it._

"No, no. I just thought of something." There was a jittery, almost light-headed sense of excitement as something occurred to her. Her fingers were suddenly darting across the keyboard again, moving almost too quickly to see. _Please, please, please._ The information on the screen changed rapidly in response.

_Yes!_ "Tee, go ahead and do the brute-force."

"Woo?"

She bit back on her initial, more snappish response. "The codes still give us access, right? Just not quite to what we want yet. So . . ." Her fingers continued to move at speed. "I'm going to make sure everyone here has so much to occupy themselves for the next half hour or so that they're not going to have chance to pay attention to a few security log warnings."

"Bee-bop-beep." There was a certain amount of not-exactly-veiled scepticism in the droid's response.

"Yeah, but the guard there's going to give us away anyway. It doesn't matter if they find out what happens _afterwards_. Just so long as none of us are still in the vault when they do."

"Wooo. Wee-beep-woo-beep."

"Hey! What do you mean, 'not too bad for an organic'?"

"Beep."

Before she could make any retort, a voice spoke in her ear, making her jolt violently. It was Tamar. "Hey there, Mission. Jolee says you're in and good to go. Say in twenty seconds? We're about to move on the target."

Mission swore beneath her breath as she mistyped something and had to go back a couple of steps. Panic surged hard inside her again. "Hey, hold onto your headtails there, big guy. What happened to all that Jedi patience stuff, anyway?" The attempted lightness in her tone fell decidedly flat.

There was a brief silence.

"Problem?"

-s-s-

"Problem?" Tamar asked. His voice was almost sub-audible, lips barely moving.

The grand lobby of Eredine Secure Storage's premium vaultship stretched out in front of him in all its harshly angular, militaristically black-durasteeled splendour. Prominently visible, heavy gun-emplacements and sensor pods bristled, swivelling to track anything that moved even a fraction in their vicinity. If it was meant to intimidate, then it did a _very_ good job. If it was meant to assure customers or potential thieves of the facility's impregnable security, it was likewise successful.

It certainly _wasn't_ the sort of place where you wanted to hit any last minute snags.

"Everything's just peachy now." The over bright tone of Mission's voice triggered further alarm bells in his head. "Perfectly under control. We just need about another, say, minute or so . . ." There was what sounded like an interjection from T3 at that point, followed by a hastily muffled curse from Mission. "Erm. Tee says better make that two minutes."

Tamar strangled back the urge to demand to know what was going on and simply said, "Will do. Keep me posted."

_Crap_. As the communication broke off, he sent a thread of Force ahead of him to Jolee and Yuthura, warning them to slow down.

Inside, the tension wound another notch tighter. He'd known this was a bad idea right from the beginning. The fact that it was entirely his _own_ bad idea, on balance, didn't help much.

This 'vaultship' had once been a Mandalorian destroyer – part of the lightning invasion force that had struck Eres III at the height of the wars. Its wrecked hulk had silently orbited the planet ever since, in death part of an entire graveyard of shattered warships: Mandalorian, Republic and Eres defence force alike.

How anyone had ever come up with the idea of giving those dead vessels a new form of life, Tamar couldn't say. But they had, and now this slowly spinning accumulation of space hulks formed one of the more exclusive secure storage facilities in the known galaxy.

Ahead of him, he saw Yuthura apparently catch her heel in a grate on the floor, reeling sideways until Jolee caught hold of her arm to steady her.

Entirely manufactured of course. Nothing she did unconsciously would ever have been so clumsy or lacking in grace.

His gaze lingered on her briefly. She was dressed up to pass herself off as a Coruscanti mogul's executive secretary, and perhaps his mistress; sleek, elegant, almost fatally sexy. As looks went, it was light years away from anything he'd seen on her before, and it was certainly . . . arresting.

He drew a deep breath. Now was definitely not the time for _those_ kinds of thoughts. The difference in Jolee was even more profound. The old man actually looked distinguished instead of disreputable: steely, silvered, and authoritative. Amazing the difference that an expensive suit, an elegant wroshyr wood walking cane, and a subtle alteration of body language could make.

Pulling his gaze away from them both, Tamar shifted his attention to the reception committee waiting for them at the far end of the lobby. As yet, the curiosity that he sensed on their part didn't seem to have hardened into suspicion. How long that would remain the case, he had no idea.

Yuthura finally freed her heel from the grate and straightened, smoothing down her skirt. He heard her muttering something in rapid-fire Twi'leki, amid which the word 'schutta' was sharply audible, pitched to carry to the other end of the lobby.

As Jolee extended an arm to her, a picture of a perfect refined old billionaire gentleman, Yuthura accepted with a haughty coiling of her headtails. Together, arms interlocked, they started walking smoothly and unhurriedly forward again, between the aisles of gun turrets that swivelled to track them.

Altogether, that had gained maybe an extra thirty seconds.

As he followed in their wake, a grimly silent shadow playing at being bodyguard again, Tamar hid a grimace. Why was it always in situations like this that time seemed to flow about as smoothly as attempting to pour treacle up hill?

As they crossed the lobby's halfway point it was like some kind of prearranged signal was tripped. One of the waiting figures detached themselves from the others and stepped forward. She was a Falleen, slender, golden-scaled and sheathed in immaculate white – slinky and serpentine.

"Mr Harbrom." Her smile of greeting was dazzling, both in its whiteness and its complete insincerity. "Such a pleasure to finally meet you face to face."

Jolee took her proffered hand and bowed low to kiss it. "And you must be Naeva. Even more lovely in the flesh than I had already deduced from hearing your voice. Please, to you I shall _always_ be Erlan."

Tamar struggled to keep his face straight.

"Erlan then." She sounded slightly bemused. Wondering if she'd overdone it with the pheromones, Tamar thought dryly.

"And my delectable associate here," Jolee added smoothly, "is Mintera. Although come to think if it, the two of you have probably met already, when you were first setting this delightful little arrangement of ours up."

_Don't overdo it there, old man._

The answering thought was formless, but decidedly rude.

Naeva was looking at Yuthura askance. "I don't believe so . . ."

"I understand that it was Elleste who took care of all the arrangements at this end," Yuthura corrected smoothly.

"Ah yes. Dear Elleste." Jolee manufactured a sigh. "So very sad that." He slowly shook his head.

"Am I to understand that your colleague has . . . passed on? If so, you have my sympathies." Tamar could suddenly sense palpable uncertainty from the Falleen, but there wasn't the kind of reaction to the name that they'd feared.

"Passed on? What? Oh, goodness me no. Did I give that impression?" Jolee's expression was startled. "I _am_ sorry. I merely meant that she has recently moved on to new employment. But we're a close run organisation. Almost like one big family, you might say. Parting ways is never easy."

Naeva tried to steer the conversation back in the direction of current business. Tamar could sense a kind of contemptuous boredom from her, carefully masked behind the façade of polite sincerity. "I understand that you're wanting to make a withdrawal today, Mr . . . Erlan?" She steered him and Yuthura towards the main desk. HK, for once managing to blend into the background and resemble the protocol droid he was supposed to be, followed close at their heels.

"Indeed so, my dear."

"You understand our procedures, Erlan?" Naeva inquired.

"Mission?" Tamar murmured, hanging back. The pair of Echani making up the rest of Erlan Harbrom's supposed bodyguard followed their employer more closely, leaving him to bring up the rear.

"Nearly there. Nearly there. Just another minute," came the response. There was a hissing exhalation, then: "Okay, two at the absolute most."

_It was two minutes about two minutes ago_. "I don't know how long we can stall here, Mish. If we have to abort we need to know now."

"Hey, we're going as fast as we can, you know." A brief, stifled curse. "Look, we'll get it done. I'll let you know."

The comm. cut off again. _Still need to stall, Jolee_, he sent. He could feel his heart rate picking up as he tried to gauge their chances if all the surrounding turrets were to open fire.

". . . take a biological sample to confirm you are who say you are. Just a formality, you understand."

Jolee grunted in response to Naeva's words. "Hmph. Minty, dearest, did I provide these people with a biological signature for them to measure against? I certainly don't _recall_ doing so."

"Elleste would have taken care of that when we first rented the storage space," Yuthura explained. Her voice contained just the right mixture of weary indulgence and put upon boredom.

He frowned, looking rather disgruntled by the whole business. "If you say so."

"So, if you'd like to place you thumb on the pad here?" Naeva prompted. "It'll just take a second to confirm."

_Not ready yet._

_So you keep saying._

Jolee drew back, looking up sharply at Naeva's exquisite golden-scaled face. "There aren't any needles involved in this, are there?" He peered at the Falleen owlishly. "One thing I just _won't_ abide is needles."

"No needles." The Falleen smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "It's just a scan. I assure you, you won't feel a thing."

"That's exactly what my doctor always says," Tamar heard him mutter. He could feel his palms sweating as the tension built. _Damn it, Mission, get a move on_.

His gaze moved past Naeva to the phalanx of black clad figures lurking behind her, silent and immobile. Very, very capable, was his instantaneous assessment.

But still, those they could probably take care of – should the need arise. It would be more the complete lockdown, which would be initiated within a fraction of a second of an alert being triggered, that caused the problem. That, and the fact the gun turrets could probably lay down enough covering fire to shred an entire legion in seconds flat.

Abruptly, Jolee whirled away from Naeva and jabbed with his walking cane in the general direction of one of the aforementioned turrets. Tamar jolted hard, his heart leaping up into his throat as the turret in question, and its three immediate neighbours, immediately swivelled round to draw a bead on him. _Damn it, old man . . ._

"These are Aratech, right? They look like Aratech to me."

For a moment, Naeva seemed totally nonplussed by the sudden turn in the conversation. Her expression smoothed over quickly. "I'm sorry, Erlan, but I'm really not at liberty to discuss the details of our security measures . . ."

Jolee made an airy, dismissive gesture. "No, no. That's not what I meant at all, dear. Of course I don't expect you to tell me anything like _that_. That wouldn't do at all, would it? It's just . . . I've been getting the occasional, well not to sound melodramatic here, but death threat of late. Tedious business, and hence the three lunks standing behind me today. What are their names again, Minty? I know you've told me before, but I keep forgetting. Memory like a sieve these days."

"Gare, Shilom and Ribas," Yuthura supplied.

"Ah, yes, yes." A frown. "Are you sure that's Ribas? I thought Ribas was the big blond one. No? Ah, never mind." His hand came to scratch his chin musingly. "Anyway, sorry, what was I talking about? I'm getting sidetracked here aren't I? Ah yes . . . the deaththreats. Bloody environmentalists . . .. It's all a bit of a drag, but my insurance people do insist I take it seriously, tedious buggers that they are. So, my point is, I'm looking to upgrade the security on my various estates, and I just now had the thought: you people are really the experts here, aren't you? I mean, your whole job is built around having the best security systems money can buy, hmm?"

_She's getting suspicious_. Tamar could feel it. It was all about to go horribly, horribly wrong, and he didn't even have his lightsaber.

_I know she's getting suspicious, _Jolee shot back. _Now shut up and stop being such a panicky ass._

"I'm afraid that's not really my area." Naeva's voice had turned a touch frosty. "Perhaps I could arrange a meeting with our security chief though. He could go over the major issues you would need to consider."

Jolee smiled at her broadly, seemingly entirely oblivious to the rather ambiguous phrasing of her words. "Oh, could you do that? Thank you. That would be absolutely wonderful. You're an absolute darling. A total star . . ."

"We're in. We're in." Mission's voice suddenly came over Tamar's headset, near hyperactive with excitement and relief.

_Okay, Jolee. Go._ His own sense of relief right then was near shattering too.

Abruptly, Jolee stopped. "Ack, I'm being a tedious old bore here, aren't I? You're on a schedule, aren't you? You really should tell me when that happens. I won't be offended, you know. I just tend to get a little carried away sometimes." He stepped forward and pressed his thumb down on the scanner.

The Falleen smiled thinly. "That's quite all right, Erlan." Then, after a moment's pause. "Well, everything seems to be in order here. I told you that this was just a formality, didn't I?" She gestured towards one of the black clad men lurking behind her. "Maneras here will show you the way."

-s-s-

Juhani listened to the myriad overlapping flows of burbling water and strove to find calm amidst them all.

Whenever she visited the Jedi Temple on Coruscant – which in truth wasn't often; perhaps four times in a span of ten years – she always took the opportunity to visit the Room of a Thousand Fountains and meditate there for a time. Always before, it had been a place of solace for her – one of the few places where she had ever been able to find tranquillity and centre herself just through being there.

Except . . . not now.

Indeed, as she sat cross-legged on the floor of polished stone, those flowing waters seemed to bring the exact opposite of tranquillity.

Instead of finding peace, the turmoil inside her seemed to become amplified, each flow of water a thread of laughing chaos, pulling her thoughts in another completely contradictory direction. In the midst of it all, images of Quatra's body – laid out on the mortuary slab, icy pale as the sheet was pulled back, save for where the lightsaber burns marred her flesh – span and twisted. The images mingled with the interrogatory voices of the Jedi Council. Hundreds of questions – thousands – bombarding her from every direction. Strident; accusing; demanding – mingling together into one incoherent roaring mass of sound that overwhelmed all her attempts to block it out, until all she wanted was to curl up into a protective ball and plug her ears . . .

Someone moved behind her. Drew her back.

A hand touched her shoulder lightly; its touch calming. "Easy, Juhani. Return to me."

She blinked. The background roaring faded to just the burbling of water again. Her breath was coming raggedly. Patterns of dappled sunlight made her head spin.

The face peering back at her was pale blue, delicate looking, surrounded by a mass of feathery brown down.

"Master Kwex." There was a slight stammer to her voice and she felt her skin heat beneath her fur. She swallowed. To be caught amidst such an obvious loss of control, right at the sacred heart of the Temple . . .

Unfolding herself, she rose hastily to her feet.

The Omwati Jedi Master's expression was grave. To her surprise though, he made no mention of her slip. "I feel that I must apologise to you, Juhani. It would be . . . presumptuous of me to do so on behalf of the entire Council, so I will restrict those apologies to personal ones. But you should not have had to go through that."

Her gaze dropped away from his. "I-I understand the urgency of the situation, and that these are trying times."

He stepped alongside her, small in her shadow. "Nevertheless . . . it was hardly an edifying display on our part, and certainly not something you should have had to endure. Especially at such a time."

He was referring to the four-hour plus interrogation session before the Jedi Council she'd not long emerged from. And interrogation wasn't, she thought, too strong a description of what had taken place. The sheer vehemence and almost accusatory nature of the questioning had been the thing that had left her most shaken, feeling like she had somehow done something terribly, terribly wrong, without quite knowing what.

And then there was the fact that Quatra's murder seemed almost to have been forgotten, everyone far more concerned by the fact that she'd been in contact with Revan . . .. In others, she would have called what she'd seen fear and hysteria, but these were Jedi Masters . . .

". . . my condolences for Master Quatra," Kwex continued. "I understand that the two of you were close."

Juhani inclined her head. "I think that Belaya is taking it harder than I am right now." The grief that she had expected to feel hadn't hit home yet. There was still a sense of almost unreality about it, despite having seen the body with her own eyes. "But thank you."

"She will be missed. She will be missed much more than some of us, I think, have realised yet."

Juhani shot him a sidelong glance, not missing the quiet edge of bitterness in the words. The top of his head barely rose above her shoulder and he looked almost fragile in his plain brown robes. He had been one of the masters who spent considerable time in and around the Dantooine enclave, and although she didn't know him that well, he was a familiar figure to her. He had always seemed a quiet, peaceful man, his soft-spoken serenity touched by a lingering ghost of old melancholy.

After a moment, she drew a breath and began cautiously: "The last time that I spoke to Master Quatra, she claimed that there was a darkness at the heart of our Order. An obscuring darkness that threatened to consume us all, was how she put it. I-I have never before heard her speak in such terms."

Kwex simply nodded. He didn't appear at all surprised. "Some would call her sentiments overly melodramatic, perhaps. But . . . I do not think I would argue with them."

Despite the warmth of the sunlight, Juhani suddenly felt decidedly chilled. "Perhaps I am mistaken, but . . . it does not seem that either her concerns, or her death are being treated . . ." She hesitated over the words, grappling with a quiet and growing anger inside. "As seriously as they might be." A grimace. "My impression is that the Council are currently preoccupied by perceived external threats and not prepared to look beyond them."

She heard Kwex sigh. "Not a wholly inaccurate assessment, much as I wish I could say otherwise."

There was a brief period of silence and Juhani stepped away from him, trailing a hand lightly across the surface of one of the pools, watching the spread of ripples.

Kwex continued quietly: "The new formed Council . . . some feel that they do not adequately represent the full spectrum of viewpoints within the Order, and they are drawn from too narrow a band of experience. There is grave disquiet in certain quarters about the direction in which the Order is being steered, and the potential for disastrous division if matters continue along in this vein . . .." He stopped. "Except that is not really what we are talking about, is it? Just to say that Quatra's murder _is_ being treated with due seriousness in some quarters, and you do not stand alone in this, even if it might feel that way to you now."

Juhani turned and looked at him again, her sense of unease growing. "Quatra was killed using lightsabers." As she spoke, the unease hardened, becoming dangerously close to rage.

"Yes. And from the pattern of her injuries, she faced at least two foes, and was able to put up a fight before she fell. The implications of that . . .. She was a very strong and experienced warrior, with an affinity for the Force that few of us could match. There are few among us who would be capable of killing her that way."

The words shocked her, both in their quiet steeliness and implication. Many considered Kwex to be too timid a man for his rank, Juhani knew. He didn't seem at all timid now though. "You . . . you truly think another Jedi would be capable of murdering a fellow like that, Master?"

He grimaced. His eyes looked sad. "It would not be the first time one of our number has . . . struck down another. But no, a pair working in unison, in such an apparently calculating and premeditated manner . . . that would be unusual."

"Unless of course, it is Sith," Juhani noted quietly.

Kwex nodded. "At least two Sith. In the heart of our temple, amongst us even now. Some would find that a difficult possibility to even entertain."

She would have once. She wasn't sure if she still didn't. "Tamar believes that the old Jedi Council were murdered by a woman by the name of Morrigance Fel. His former spymaster." And lover, she didn't add out loud. "He says she was able to walk into the heart of this Temple, unchallenged, then out again just as easily, having successfully accomplished her goal."

"And too many of us preferred to believe that the old Revan was back than seriously entertain that as a possibility." He sound pained as he said this, to a degree that surprised Juhani for a moment until she remembered, and realised the cause.

"You were Yuthura's master."

He nodded slowly; didn't speak.

"She seemed . . . well the last time I saw her. She's with Tamar and Jo . . . Master Bindo."

A fleeting smile touched the Omwati's pale blue lips. "I heard you say earlier. But thank you. That is . . . reassuring news. It is perhaps wrong to have favourites, but she has always had a special place in my heart."

"I am certain she played no part in . . . in what happened. That neither of them did."

Another silent nod. He moved to sit, perched upon the edge of one of the fountains. To Juhani's eyes, he looked strangely bird-like, in both form and movement. "I think that . . . that your friend got a couple of things wrong, however." Kwex's voice sounded strange and distant as he spoke.

"What's that?"

"About this spymaster of his getting out again. About her getting in alone."

Juhani's heart seemed to skip a beat as his meaning sank in. "A Sith could remain hidden among us for so long?" Not just a Sith, if Tamar was correct. _The_ Dark Lord of the Sith.

She saw his lips purse. "What did you feel when you were trying to meditate, Jedi Juhani?" he asked finally.

She hesitated over her reply, and he carried on as if the question had been rhetorical in any case.

"I do not think the turmoil that you felt originated purely inside you, Juhani. The peace of this place has been disrupted, and all of us have felt the same of late, to some degree or other. Besides, the darkside is not always easy to see, even for those you would think were most adept at spotting it. It does not always take the form of a ravening monster, and it is present in all of us all of the time, in some form or another. Because we are Jedi, we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that it is something separate from us – something other, which we are able to hold at arms length through vigilance and discipline. You, for one, surely know as well as anybody here that it is not."

"We cannot see it because it is always here?" It sounded almost sacrilegious as she voiced it. The sound of the water almost seemed to resemble mocking laughter then.

"We claim there is no place where the light doesn't reach, and no one and nothing is beyond salvation. It would be folly to assume that the opposite isn't just as true. The oracles have been clouded for months now, and you stood before the newly revived Jedi Council. You felt _that_ full force. We have enough darkness and tumult of our own to deal with, I think. A little more, hidden away amongst it all doesn't seem so far fetched."

An instinctive part of her wanted to deny the words and point out the flaws in his logic.

Except . . . she couldn't see the flaws. "And Master Quatra was killed because she . . . she discovered evidence of the Sith amongst us? She was onto something?"

"Look at the timing," he murmured. "So soon after you and Jedi Belaya contacted her."

After a moment, Juhani nodded firmly, reaching a decision. "Can I see Quatra's quarters? Her possessions? Perhaps I . . ."

"Jedi investigators have already been over everything with a fine tooth comb," Kwex told her softly. "Nothing out of place, or the slightest bit suspicious, was uncovered."

She started to open her mouth to protest, but the Omwati Jedi Master cut her off again. "But yes. It does seem a sensible proposal. You knew her more personally than almost any of us did. Perhaps that will enable you to see things we are blind to."

"Can you take me to her quarters now?"

At length, he nodded.

-s-s-

Sleek and gleaming, the starship – a heavily armed and armoured hyperspace capable yacht – started its serene descent from Eres III's orbit. From one of the viewports, Morrigance watched the cherry red glow of the vast fires burning on the xoxin plains directly beneath their flightpath.

Those fires had been ignited during the Mandalorian Wars, and had been burning ever since. According to estimates, there was enough fuel still locked beneath the plains to keep them going for another two-hundred years at least.

Her gaze touched one of the huge gleaming metal citadels floating high in the planet's stratosphere. It was more than two-hundred kilometres outside the path of their descent, but even at this distance, it managed to seem awesomely majestic.

That majesty belied a rather mundane, but critical function. It was an atmospheric processing plant. One of a number, designed to extract the sulphur dioxide given off by the fires from the air and prevent it blanketing the entire planet, where it would reflect the sun's rays back into space, resulting in dramatic surface cooling and potentially triggering a new ice age. Despite the processing plants' best efforts though, Eres III's polar ice caps had already begun a slow and inexorable expansion.

It struck her as an odd paradox. Burn a world to freeze it.

_Old friend_. Morrigance directed the thought to Celyanda, who stood flanking her. _Might I have a moment alone?_

_Alone?_ The echo came back. It seemed perplexed, grappling with a concept no longer part of its world view

She stifled a sigh as she looked at the perfect golden twins. _I am still prey to human weakness and frailty, my friend. The occasional need for solitude is one vice I still cling to_.

It didn't understand, but she felt Celyanda acquiesce nonetheless. _Our offer to you still stands_.

Morrigance nodded, turning back to the viewport. _The honour you do me is amazing. And one day, if the offer remains, I will accept it gladly. For now though, until we have accomplished our immediate goals, the perspective of singulars is something we still need. And I must therefore remain as I am_.

_The offer will always remain open to you. _Morrigance sensed Celyanda step back from her and walk away.

_I understand the sacrifice that you make. _Those parting words echoed in her head.

Once she was alone, she refocused her gaze on the glow of the fire far below. Eres was a clever choice on Revan's part, she had to concede.

During the wars, he had personally led the Republic force that had met and repelled the Mandalorian invasion. It hadn't been enough to stop the xoxin plains going up in flames, but the world had been saved by his hand from worse calamities. Worse immediate calamities, at least.

In the years since the end of the Mandalorian war, Eres III had seceded from the Republic entirely, angry that – from its perspective – it was being abandoned and ignored, simply left to burn and slowly die whilst the Republic's major rebuilding efforts were prioritised towards other worlds closer to the core. There had even been a certain amount of _Schadenfreude_ among the local populace when Revan and Malak had turned on their Republic masters, and it remained one of the few places in the galaxy where Revan was still regarded almost unconditionally as a hero. There were actually entire streets named after him, or so she'd heard.

She almost laughed then, the glow of the fire glinting in the surface of her mask. _Do you know I'm coming, my other _old_ friend?_

There was a soft judder as the ship touched Eres III's atmosphere. She would have to head for one of the re-entry couches soon, but for the moment made no move to do so.

_I think you must. You would scarcely have let yourself be so careless with Arathor otherwise._

And, when it came to it, Eres III was an attention-grabbing choice for other reasons too. She had interests of her own here as well – or, at least, she had interests in the planet's orbit. For a moment, she considered the possibility that this aspect was just coincidence.

But no. Not coincidence. With him, even in the state he was now, you never dared to assume coincidence. So, another lure. Another goad to catch her attention and draw her here, into whatever trap lay prepared.

_Descending towards the inferno . . .. _As good a place as any for the end to come. Strangely appropriate, in fact.

A more violent shudder passed through the ship and she turned abruptly from the viewport, walking rapidly to rejoin Celyanda.

_"I think you're making a mistake."_

_Revan stood with his back to her on the balcony, bathed by the light of the twin moons. The red gas giant – the blood-eye of Nagslim, the apocalyptical giant who would devour the world and end the final battle, as local legends held – wasn't visible for tonight at least._

_"Really?" If he didn't exactly sound amused, he at least seemed to be in an indulgent mood. His sculpted torso gleamed with their mingled sweat and she could see the lines her fingers had left down his back, not quite faded._

_Watching him, she felt something stir within her. A small, self-mocking smile touched her lips._

_After a brief, reflective pause, he lifted the glass of Alderaanian wine to his lips and took a sip. Tonight he was trying to be Xavious rather than Darth, she thought. He seemed to be finding the transition more difficult of late though, as if the line was becoming more and more blurred. "And what mistake would that be?"_

_She didn't answer right away, disentangling herself from the mess of sheets and pulling on a thin, loose-fitting robe. The floor was cold beneath her feet and she raked a hand through the tangled mass of her hair, pushing it back from her face. "You know that I have just returned from the Star Forge." It was a statement rather than a question._

_"Ah, so this is about Malak again." He bared his teeth in something that was a smile only by approximation. "You're turning into a nag, you know that Morrigance?"_

_"You told me that you wanted me to make sure your eyes were always open and focused in the right direction. _He_ is your blindspot."_

_Revan snorted. "Have you ever thought that he is _your_ blindspot too? He is not stupid, and if you continue to let yourself think that, you will deserve whatever you get from him because of it."_

_An involuntary shudder passed through her shoulders. When she spoke again, her voice was barely louder than a whisper. "Believe me, I have long disavowed myself of that notion. I am not the slightest bit worried about his _stupidity_. Quite the reverse."_

_He raised an eyebrow, sliding a second glass along the broad stone balcony railing to her. "Try it. It's very good."_

_It was, though she didn't feel inclined to admit it. "I think I prefer Ord Mantell grapes."_

_"That, my dear, is because your tastes are downright weird." He smiled again, and made a much better job of it this time. "So, what specifically, is the problem with good old Mal?"_

Better to get straight to the point. _This close, his presence made it difficult to think entirely straight. "I think you should recall him from the Star Forge. Appoint someone else in his place."_

_"And why would I want to do that?"_

_She turned away, taking another sip from the wineglass, and tried to order nebulous fears into something she could vocalise. He wouldn't, she knew now, accept any of the Bantha-crap reasons she'd rehearsed, however convincing she might make them sound. "The Star Forge . . . it fuels his rage and hate. Warps it, and him with it."_

_There was no response right away, and she glanced at him sidelong. What she saw in his expression she couldn't immediately put a name to, but it left her feeling . . . scared._

_At length he said: "His rage is an asset. It gives him so much of his strength. And me control."_

_"Well he is certainly strong now." She almost laughed as she spoke those words – loud and bitter. "And getting stronger all the time." _

_Just being in the same room as Malak, able to feel the immensity of the dark Force energy flowing through him, had left her worrying that he was in imminent danger of entirely forgetting any broader concerns and simply gutting her where she stood._

_"And you are worried that he has grown stronger than I am, perhaps?"_

_She didn't say anything, but if she was honest, she worried absolutely that._

_He spoke softly; musingly "I have never been stronger in the Force than he is. More skilled, more controlled, more subtle, perhaps. But never truly stronger." She could feel him looking at her and her head was pulled round until their eyes locked. It wasn't the Force. It was simply the sheer force of personality, imposing itself. "Except in this _one_ way." A hand came up, touching to the centre of his forehead. "The only way that remotely matters."_

_Morrigance pulled her gaze away from his, and stared out at the distant mountains – a dark purple stain along the horizon line. In her mind she was back on the Star Forge, reviewing the reports of Malak's latest battles, and growing more and more aghast at what she read – the sheer wasteful lunacy of the tactics he was employing. It had beggared belief, that he could be so utterly incompetent . . ._

_Except . . . the more she'd read, the less it had looked like incompetence. _

_If you shifted perspective slightly and redefined his goals . . . if you stopped looking at what he was doing in terms of trying to win victories, and instead viewed it purely from the perspective of creating carnage and death and disruption in the Force . . .. Well, viewed like that, it ceased to look quite so stupid, and began to take on a perversely twisted logic. _

_A genius even._

_If you stopped viewing it in human terms, and tried to look at it from the mindset of a vastly ancient and sentient battery of dark Force energy, seeking to grow and consume and devour . . .. _

_A shudder passed through her, and she pulled herself back to the here and now. Revan was looking at her intently._

_"I think," she said quietly, "that his goals and ours are no longer even remotely compatible."_

_There was a pause. Birdsong could be heard from the forest below. _

_"The Star Forge can only be controlled by someone of iron strength and will. If I cannot do so – and right now, I cannot, because this war demands that I be elsewhere – then it must be Malak. It is as simple as that." For all that his tone was mild it brooked no possibility of argument._

_She gritted her teeth. "Surely there are others in your employ with the kind of ability you describe?"_

_"Are you volunteering for the job?"_

_Morrigance opened her mouth, then closed it again quickly._

_"No, I thought not."_

_"What of Serebos?" she asked, struggling to stay calm and neutral._

_"What of him?" The dismissal in the words was plain._

Fine. _"Then Uthar Wynn. He is capable. Experienced. Intelligent. Overdue a promotion, perhaps."_

_"The academies are crucial to our efforts, as well you know. I need to be sure they are in competent hands."_

_"Then promote his apprentice to take his place. You've said yourself how much potential she has."_

_He smiled. "She will promote herself when she is ready for the responsibility. Of that, I am certain. But the Star Forge needs far more than capable, experienced and intelligent. I think you know that too."_

_Morrigance bit back a frustrated snap. Even in her position, that would be taking things too far._

_"This truly worries you, doesn't it?" He stepped closer to her and she felt him touch her shoulder; gently stroke her hair. Even that much contact was enough to cause something to ignite inside her. The smell of him filled her nostrils, and part of her hated herself for feeling the way she did. Part of her hated him for making her feel that way._

_"It concerns me, yes," she admitted slightly shakily._

_"I am not blind to it, if that's what you fear. When I'm able to, I will relieve him personally for a time. But for now there are other matters I must attend to." He eased one shoulder of her robe lower; kissed the juncture of her neck._

_It was like liquid heat spreading beneath her skin. _Damn him. _"You still intend to join up with the fourth fleet tomorrow?"_

_"I'm not sure I trust them to lose properly without my direct guidance." He sounded almost gleeful as he said it – delighted by the idea of a defeat. "Besides, I need to experience the effects of Battle Meditation first hand if I am to factor it properly into our plans."_

_And Malak was dismissed like that. Dimly Morrigance felt a creeping sense of unease that she couldn't get rid of, but mostly she simply felt his presence – a darkly blazing star, drawing her inexorably in. The worst thing was, she didn't want to pull away. "Throw away six entire sectors to gain two. I'm sure there's some level where that makes a kind of sense."_

_He chuckled: amused, indulgent. "Six sectors of no strategic worth, that I never wanted, gained by over eager admirals looking to impress me. Controlling them is a drain on our resources."_

_Morrigance murmured as his lips moved up her neck to her ear. "It still seems . . . wasteful somehow."_

_"Six sectors that will represent the Republic's first major victory of the war. Think of the propaganda. The boost to their morale. Think what a huge deal they will make of it. Darth Revan thrown back, the entire tide of the war reversed! Maybe even total victory by year end."_

_"Hmm." The feel of his breath against her sweat damp skin made it impossible to think entirely rationally. Her head filled with images that left her breathless. "And that's good for us, is it?"_

_Another soft laugh. "Those six sectors will kill them by inches. After making such a big deal of their recapture, they'll be forced to hold onto them no matter what. The local populace will demand constant protection after their taste of Sith occupation, and the Republic will be forced to oblige. Just imagine the public reaction if they were to lose them again. Six strategically worthless sectors, draining their resources and sapping their will, a constant millstone round their neck"_

_"And you will waltz straight past them while they're occupied defending something worthless. Ignore them entirely." She was starting to figure how his mind worked; the cold, remorseless calculations._

_His arms slid around her waist from behind; drew her in close to him. She let herself be drawn. "They'll need to draw their forces from somewhere. It will weaken the entire spinswise portion of their lines."_

_"And they'll take the bait?" She made a small, stifled sound as his hands slid down her flanks – a different kind of advanced tactical manoeuvre. "Dodonna won't spot what you're doing? You said yourself that she was good."_

_"As a tactician she is the _best_. I can't think of a commanding officer I've ever known more capable of running a battle than she is." He nibbled at her earlobe. "But she's not just running battles. She's running an entire war, and for that . . . for that she just doesn't have the broader vision. Karath should be in charge. I wouldn't dream of trying this against Karath. But right now, he's more ours than theirs."_

_If Malak was to be believed._

_He buried his face in the hair at the nape of her neck. Against the better judgment of the rational parts of her brain, she allowed herself to succumb entirely._

_"Besides, once they realise I am there, conducting the battle personally . . . They'll bite so hard you won't be able to prise their teeth apart again. For a time, I imagine that evading them will prove quite . . . entertaining."_

_She felt his hands on the belt of her robe and twisted lithely round in his grasp so that they stood facing each other. _

_Their eyes locked. She traced the side of his face with a fingertip. Her breath was coming very quickly. So was his. "And if they were to catch you?"_

_A smooth tug on the belt and her robe fell open. "Now that would be a shame, wouldn't it?" His hands moved inside – drew her tight against him. "But in that event, I'm sure that I can trust you to see things through. Right to the end."_

_And with that, things moved beyond the point of words, and Morrigance allowed him to pull her down – all the while knowing that now, more than ever, she had to find a way out._

-s-s-

Judge Eccol Ikaasa took a sip from the glass of water.

"I almost didn't recognise him. We've known each other for years. Not friends exactly, but I've always thought of him as one of the more reasonable Senators I've encountered. Someone that I respected. A man of integrity. Even after what happened to Telos and the awful business with his wife, that reasonableness and compassion still shone through. But now . . ."

The intercom crackled. Judge Ikaasa winced, the sound inducing a pain in his skull entirely out of proportion with the effect.

"Well you have to admit, Eccol, he has very good cause for being the way he is." The voice from the other end of the commlink sounded weirdly loud and distorted too. Ikaasa frowned – drained the rest of the water.

"The point is . . ." His voice had a weird croak, barely audible. He tried again, "The point is, for all that he may have cause, he's never been this way before. And . . ." Damn, his head hurt. ". . . you'd think his . . . his grief and anguish would lessen with time rather than the other way around."

"Human psychology is a messy thing, Eccol. It doesn't necessarily work like that, and it isn't neat and tidy. They aren't logical like Caamasi."

Judge Ikaasa blinked. His vision seemed to be blurring. He put the empty glass down, though he was suddenly so clumsy that he almost missed the table entirely.

"Have you considered . . . compromising your position slightly?" The voice now sounded distant rather than overloud. There was a strange rushing noise in Ikaasa's ears.

"Compromising?" He blinked again. "This is the law we're talking about here. Not a consumer commodity to be bought and sold. Besides, the situation is bad enough as it is. The last thing we need right now is the circus of a show trial. And we . . . we both know that it isn't the trial part that everyone wants. It's the public execution. The verdict has been decided on already . . ."

Ikaasa trailed off. He needed to sit down. Suddenly his head was spinning and it was difficult to breathe.

"Maybe you're right, but you can't say he doesn't have it coming, can you Eccol? I mean, not seriously."

"Has it coming?" Ikaasa staggered, panting. "Has it coming?"

"Are you all right Eccol? You sound . . . weird."

"Let's just string him up and forget about any other considerations because 'he has it coming'. Yes, that would be just perfect . . ." His voice dwindled with each word until Ikaasa couldn't hear himself at all, even as his mouth still moved.

Abruptly he swayed alarmingly, took a couple of short, stumbling steps, then toppled over full length, crashing straight through the tabletop.

"Eccol? Are you still there?" the voice from the intercom demanded.

And quietly, almost unnoticed, half a dozen _particular_ individuals across Coruscant died within the space of a few hours, all of them from natural causes.

-s-s-

"So, did you actually find anything after all that?"

Tamar took the breath mask off before trying to answer Bastila's question. He didn't miss the definite sharpness to her tone. He didn't miss the seething irritation either, for all that she was obviously trying hard to mask it.

Outside the hotel, Eres III's sky was a shade of red-gold to match the most spectacular sunset imaginable. Except sunset wasn't due for another four hours. Even separated from the burning xoxin plains by more than a thousand miles of ocean, the air here was so full of pollutants and carcinogens that it was dangerous to breathe unfiltered. One statistic he'd heard had it that since the fires had started, infant mortality on Eres had increased by more than a thousand percent.

Yet despite that – and despite temperatures more than ten degrees lower than they should have been this time of year – Eres didn't appear to be dying. In fact, in an odd way, it was actually flourishing.

The reason it was flourishing was tourism. Millions of sentients came each year to see the fires first hand, taking chartered flights over the vast plains of burning crystal and gawping at the seeds the Mandalorian war had sown.

"Droids," Tamar said finally. "An entire vault full of droids."

In a space of around nine-hundred squares metres there had been somewhere over three-hundred of the things, ranging from top of the line battlefield assault models to a pair of strangely familiar looking prototype assassin droids. HK-47 had reacted rather violently to seeing these, and the galaxy was now sadly two HK-48s short.

Bastila just snorted. "Well, that was _definitely_ worth it then."

He didn't argue with her assessment, but inwardly wasn't nearly so sure of it. As well as the droids, there had been weaponry – enough in the way of small arms and munitions to run a planetary scale revolution for a year. Tied to the fact that Darth Auza's records identified more than thirty similar sites to the one orbiting Eres III, all set up by Elleste Strine, and it was certainly – at the very least – a disquieting find. How it might fit in to Morrigance's broader plans though, he struggled to fathom.

Perhaps in the end it didn't. Perhaps it was simply something she genuinely had done on Auza's behalf. Whatever, the thought of say, thirty civil wars igniting simultaneously in and around Republic space – especially given the current state of Republic affairs – was not exactly a positive one.

He hid a grimace. "Look at it this way. We're now the proud owners of more than three hundred heavily armed battle droids." _On top of the Echani mercenaries_. The thought left him cold. Almost by accident, he was acquiring what amounted to an army.

The look Bastila shot his way communicated her thoughts on the matter far more effectively than any words could have.

And he didn't, in all honestly, blame her.

"How's Canderous doing?" he asked quietly in an effort to change the subject.

She looked away from him, walking across to the window. The fleeting sense of discomfort he got from her suggested that even that, somehow, had been the wrong thing to ask.

"If everything's gone to schedule, the operation should be finishing just about now."

Which meant Canderous should be the proud owner of a brand new cybernetic arm. The idea of that made Tamar wince slightly, though he wasn't entirely sure why. "That's good to hear," he said after a moment.

"Yes."

He could still feel something across the bond between them. It was akin to a prickling itch beneath the skin. Eventually, as the silence between them dragged, he gave in to the inevitable. "You still think it was a mistake to come here, don't you?"

There was no answer right away.

Eventually she said: "Even if you're right about this Morrigance; even if you manage to draw her out into the open here and stop her, it doesn't change the fact that Darth Malefic has over two-hundred living ships under his command. Whether he is being manipulated or doing it entirely of his own initiative makes no material difference. Nothing we do here can affect _that_."

They'd had had this discussion at length on the _Rancorous_. The words used had been slightly different, but in essence had been the same.

"You're right," he said simply rather than go through it all again.

Bastila looked back at him. "I'm _right_?" There was an edge of incredulity to her voice.

"But the fact is, we don't know where Malefic is, or what he's doing. For all that he now has in his sole possession the single biggest, most dangerous fleet in the galaxy, there hasn't even been a whisper of it over any channels we have access to. No unexplained attacks. No contact lost with systems. No suspicious sightings. Nothing."

"He can't just have disappeared."

"So he's in Sith space, where we aren't hearing about it. Unifying the Sith and establishing himself as the one true Dark Lord."

The explanation made sense on one level. It was quite simply the logical next move on his part, whether he was being manipulated or not. Except . . . Tamar hid a grimace. Something just didn't feel right at all.

"All the more reason we have to act now," Bastila insisted. "While the Republic still has a chance to prepare and ready itself."

He stifled a sigh of exasperation. They were retreading it all yet again anyway, it seemed. "We are acting. Here."

"No, _you're_ acting." And it was clear enough from her tone that she thought he was acting more or less entirely stupidly.

He walked past her, taking her place at the window and looking down at the plaza twenty floors below – the crowds of breath-masked people, going about their daily business as their world burned. "So what _should_ I do, if not what I'm doing now?" His hand came up, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Honestly, I'd be grateful for any suggestions."

It didn't come out sounding at all the way he wanted it to. It never did with her.

Silence dragged. That's what the entire level of their interaction seemed to have come down to now. Uncomfortable silence punctuated by argument and accusation.

"You think I should turn myself in, don't you?" He said finally. "That I'm making excuses."

Again, she didn't say anything right away, but he felt her react to his words across the bond – a whole conflicted tangle of emotions.

"I think," she said finally, "that you and Jolee and Yuthura should return with me to Coruscant, and we should go before the Jedi Council together and convince them about the nature of the threat they face. Convince them that they and the Republic need to stand squarely together and prepare for Malefic's coming. If the four of us stand firm, they can't simply ignore what we say. Not all of us."

Tamar didn't vocalise his response, but apparently, she sensed it anyway.

She made a small sound that was half laugh and half not. "I was once so absolutely certain that you were utterly and unambiguously wrong when you and Malak defied the Jedi Council and went to fight the Mandalorians. Yet now . . . I seem intent on trying to put myself in the same position, and . . . it's not clear at all anymore." A sigh. "I don't know at all what I'm going to do, if it comes to _that_."

He looked back at her and their eyes met, silent communication passing between them.

She smiled shakily. "We just have to make sure we're much more convincing this time, won't we? They can't ignore the threat. The urgency . . ."

She trailed off as he kept on looking at her. They _could_ ignore the threat, and maybe it was a sign that he'd been infected by a near terminal case of cynicism here, but Tamar was fairly certain that they would ignore it. At least until the Living Fleet showed up on their doorstep and started knocking.

"I'm sure they'll eventually agree to anything that Jolee says, just to get him to shut up." His tone was light on the surface, belying his inner thoughts.

But they'd stopped being able to fool each other with surface some time ago now.

She swallowed. "They need you. They need _all_ that you are. If we're going to repel Malefic we need . . ."

"No they don't," he said gently, cutting her off.

Bastila jolted visibly.

"I am _him_. Revan. I can't escape that, but in one fairly crucial way, I'm also not. The me my memory says I am has never led more than a dozen men into battle. That me never fought and won the Mandalorian wars. Even if they were insane enough to want that part back, I'm not sure I _could_ be that again."

Even as he spoke though, he couldn't help but wonder if he was lying. He stopped; shook his head.

He could feel her searching for something else to say; feel her discomfort. "You could try."

"I could try," he echoed. So simple, it sounded.

Eventually he nodded. "After I've seen this through to its conclusion here on Eres, one way another, I'll do as you ask. We'll go and stand before the new Jedi Council together and try to make them listen. I won't speak for Yuthura or Jolee, but I will promise you that."

He could sense that she wanted to say something else – to argue further, but she stopped herself. Neither of them said any more.

A short time later, with them both still groping uncomfortably for something to say, Tamar's comm. unit beeped in his ear. It was Yuthura. He felt relief, when he knew well enough that he should probably feel the opposite.

She came straight to the point. "The message we were waiting for has arrived."

Something clenched inside his chest; excitement and anxiety at once. "Hulas?"

"No." He detected a sardonic, halfway-amused edge to Yuthura's voice. "Not directly, anyway. One of his lackeys, apparently. A Bothan. He knew all the pre-arranged code phrases though."

"This is bad news, isn't it?" He could tell.

"For some reason you don't sound surprised there, Tamar." The sardonic amusement had, if anything, intensified. He felt it too, he supposed. In a black and twisted sort of way. Barely at the first step, and it was unravelling. "Hulas wants to change the meet. Both place and time."

"I do hope you told him to frak off."

Yuthura laughed. "Oh, I did _far_ more than that. I think I offended the poor Bothan's sensibilities slightly." A pause, then casually. "He had Dashade bodyguards, by the way. They stayed stealthed throughout our meeting, but I recognised the smell."

Tamar swore beneath his breath, attracting a sharp look from Bastila. But it did indeed genuinely suggest that this unnamed Bothan really _was_ Genoharadan. There weren't many who could employ Dashade these days. "So, what's the situation?"

"Allegedly out of concern over 'security', your Rodian friend now wants us to go to Bay 6E of Xavex spaceport at 1900 hours. A flyer will be waiting for us there to ferry us to an unspecified destination. The Bothan, incidentally, claimed to be nothing more than messenger, with no power to either negotiate on Hulas's behalf, or conduct messages."

"Take it or leave it, in other words." His voice was heavy.

"That's about the size of it."

_Just great_. "So what's your opinion?"

"It's either a trap, or he's found some other way to screw us. Either way, it does a very good job of blowing a gaping hole in our plans." Yuthura's voice was neutral, and across the commlink, he couldn't gain any kind of underlying sense.

"What's happened?"

Tamar shook his head distractedly in response to Bastila's query. He was surprised to find the beginnings of a smile creeping up on him. "I say we go with it." His mind was working rapidly then, going over the angles.

"How did I know you were going to say that?" Yuthura's tone was dry.

"Perhaps it's all that meditation you've been doing with Jolee paying off. Allowing you to glimpse the future."

"Very droll."

"Right, can you contact the _Rancorous_ and have it brought into close orbit? Set things up so they can track our position down to the nearest millimetre." Tamar's words rattled out. "I'm going to call Tee. Arrange a few last minute contingencies. Did Hulas place any limitation on numbers for the meet?"

"Apparently the flyer waiting for us will take two passengers. I suppose that means you can come with me." Her tone was light, but even without being able to see the set of her headtails he could tell that there wasn't going to be any arguing with it.

"I'll see you there then."

"Don't be late." The comm. link cut off.

Bastila was looking at him intently. There was more than a hint of resignation to her expression. "I take it things are starting to happen."

_And that they aren't going to plan_: that was implicit in her words.

He nodded. "I need to go. Make arrangements."

She nodded in turn. It all felt so strange between them now, he thought. Not quite real. "Unless you need me, I'll be at the hospital. Seeing how Canderous is recovering. Seeing if I can do anything for Captain Organa and the other casualties."

He nodded again.

"I'd say be careful, but I know you won't be. So . . . I hope you know what you're doing, and may the Force be with you." With that, she turned around and left.

-s-s-

"I know that your real name is Carth Onasi. I know that you're _that_ Carth Onasi. And I know that for durasteel hard fact. So you don't have to start with any of that Valden bantha crap."

He blinked slowly. His pupils were hugely dilated, and he seemed to be struggling to focus on her face. His lips moved, but the only sound that came out was a whisper soft breath.

He looked . . . well, he looked a lot better than when she and Ellas had found him, but that wasn't exactly saying a lot. A Tukata class bomber wasn't large enough to have anything resembling a functional sickbay, so he was simply strapped securely down on one of the acceleration couches, hooked to drips that fed a combination of kolto and painkillers into his system.

After a moment, he tried to speak again, and this time succeeded in producing a slightly louder, but still entirely incomprehensible sound.

Yolanda exhaled. "Oh, stop trying to talk and concentrate on lying on your ass and healing. It's the only thing you're any good for right now."

Third time seemed to the charm as he ignored her and tried again anyway. "Burnt?" It was hoarse, but recognisable as speech.

A pause. "You got lucky. Those facial prosthetics of yours absorbed enough of it that you still just about manage to qualify as a pretty boy, and your armour managed to protect you from the worst of the rest. Ellas managed to patch you up pretty well." She managed to force a smile that made it feel like her face was in danger of splitting in two. "Pity about your hair though. I don't know, maybe it'll grow back? You'd better hope so. Bald looks even worse on you than blond did."

"Thanks," he croaked.

"Don't mention it."

She looked away from him, ostensibly studying the monitor attached to one of his drip lines.

"He . . ." A rasping cough as he tried to clear his throat. "He's gone. I can't feel him anymore."

Yolanda grunted. "It was his choice to make, you know. Not ours. We might not have made it away from Kamari if it wasn't for him."

"W-What?" Carth's hand caught hold of her wrist. Despite his apparent weakness, his grip was painfully tight, too strong to simply pull away from.

She looked back at him, meeting eyes that suddenly seemed feverishly bright. Inwardly she winced, realisation hitting her. "Who were you talking about?" Not Ellas, she was suddenly willing to bet.

"I . . . I was . . . the Catcher. The link between us . . . it's gone. He's . . . not in my head anymore."

He must have seen her reaction; the surprised flinch she didn't quite hide in time. He was frowning. "That means . . . that means he's dead, right? That you and Ellas finished him. That we won?"

She looked away again.

"Where's Ellas. I . . . I need to speak to him."

Firmly, she pried free of his grip. Carth didn't resist. "He . . . didn't make it. We didn't win, Carth." It still seemed strange, calling him that. "The Catcher . . . the Catcher killed the doctor. Not the other way round."

"But . . . why can't I feel _him_ then?"

Yolanda shook her head, almost asking him if he was sure, before remembering the Catcher's own words. "Maybe Ellas was able to do something to break the link," she said quietly. "To block it. I don't know."

He swore, his head smacking down against the pillow. "Damn it. You . . . you should have stopped him. You should have stopped him doing that. He . . . the Catcher. Revan . . ." The words stopped dead.

"Revan?" Her head snapped back round and she stared at him. His jaw was clenched tight, and he seemed to be gazing off into the middle-distance at something that wasn't there. His skin suddenly looked almost grey. "You know him, right?" Her voice was whisper soft.

There was no answer.

Something clicked. "Frak. That's why the Catcher wants you so badly, isn't it? Not just because you're you. He wants Revan, and thinks you can give him to him." She shivered. The air suddenly seemed very cold, and she began to wonder just what the hell she was really caught up in. "Saviour. Destroyer. Messiah. Everyone wants a piece of Revan these days. You know there's a cult out there who worship him as a god? Entire holoNet channels devoted to sightings of him? That's what I heard, anyway."

Carth didn't say anything, apparently lost in a world of his own. From the outside, it didn't look to be a particularly pleasant world.

She started back towards the cockpit, before stopping again abruptly. There was a reason she'd come to see if he was conscious, after all. "What I came to tell you Carth, is that we're heading for Coruscant."

That seemed to penetrate. "Coruscant?" The surprise in his voice was clearly audible. Then, a moment later. "Why?"

"Well, I was thinking I could sell my story to the tabloids there. My night of sordid passion with the Republic's greatest living war hero. Got to be worth a fair few credits, don't you think? Maybe I can make enough out of it to retire from this stupid Bantha-fraking career and buy a farm somewhere. Deralia perhaps. Some out of the way backwater where nothing ever happens, anyway."

"Huh?"

She made a small, quiet noise. "I was joking, Carth." Though the words, as they'd come out, had felt closer to bitterness than humour.

After a moment, he cleared his throat again. "Yolanda, why are we going to Coruscant?" The clearly, precise enunciation obviously took considerable effort.

Briefly, she closed her eyes. "Because you want – you _will_ want to go there."

He seemed to miss a couple of beats. Obviously not the answer he'd been expecting. "Why would I want that?"

The moment seemed to last an eternity. After it passed, she leant across a control panel and activated the Catcher's recorded message so that it played back over the ships intercomm.

_"Warm felicitations to you, Carth. You seem in quite the hurry to get away . . ."_

Then she did walk back into the cockpit. It felt like something inside her was dying.

-s-s-

"You are Morrigance Fel."

Morrigance stopped, looking at the speaker – a Bothan – carefully. She noted the dully-gleaming metal circlet he wore, indicating clearly that he had known enough about her to come prepared. She lifted a hand in a calming gesture to Celyanda. _Not yet_. "And who might you be?"

"Profoundly unimportant in comparison to you," he was saying, though she wasn't more than a quarter focused on his words.

There was someone else there. Someone very good at hiding. Good at shielding themselves from the Force.

_Four of them, _Celyanda projected into her head. _The nature of the flows change around them – makes it difficult to see. But they are there._

"And who else is here, eavesdropping, _Unimportant_ person?"

The Bothan shrugged, then snapped something in a language that surprised her. It was a language she'd thought was dead.

A moment later, four stealth fields flickered off, and four exceedingly heavily armed and dangerous looking Dashade appeared, flanking him.

"My bodyguard." His tone was smooth and cordial. "Just as you have yours." He indicated Celyanda with a casual gesture. "A matter of simple prudence on both our parts."

"What do you want?" The presence of the Dashade made it unlikely he was affiliated with Revan – at least in his current incarnation. Hulas on the other hand . . .

"I bring a simple gift of information." With an exaggerated flourish, a small egg-shaped object appeared in the Bothan's hand. "May I?"

"Go ahead."

He placed the object – a holo-projector – down carefully on the rough plastocrete floor between them. Immediately it hummed to life, an image appearing, floating in the air between them.

"This shows landing bay 6E at Xavex spaceport, 600 kilometres north of here, as of about seven and a half minutes ago."

There were two craft visible in the landing bay, one a small atmosphere bound flyer capable of holding a maximum of four passengers. The second was a compact, stub-nosed shuttle of a type Morrigance recognised dimly from Nar Shaddaa – Hutt designed, she realised.

It was the three people in view that caught most of her attention though, to the extent that she realised after a moment that she'd stopped breathing.

Strange, she thought, how someone could look physically exactly the same as they always had, yet at the same appear so utterly, utterly different to the man she'd once known. As she watched him, she could taste the bile rising in her throat.

Ban stood at his side, looking lean and elegant. Anger briefly flared in her before she throttled it back ruthlessly. _Idiot. Blind, naïve idiot. I tried to warn you. Do you share his bed now, too?_

Morrigance sucked in a breath and her gaze moved briefly on to the third figure, dressed in a pilot's coveralls, before returning swiftly to Revan. There seemed to be some kind of an argument going on as to whether the flyer or the shuttle should be used. And there she saw a ghost of a familiar expression briefly on his face, a glimpse of the real man lurking somewhere underneath the Jedi's flesh puppet. Something icy touched her heart.

The pilot spoke something into a comm. unit. The picture quality and angle of the camera meant she wasn't able to fully read his lips.

When the hasty call finished, the pilot nodded to Revan with obvious reluctance. The three figures stepped towards the shuttle. And the image faded . . .

"The holo-projector also contains details of their destination."

As the Bothan stepped back, Morrigance bent to pick it up. "And what, may I ask, do you seek to gain through this?"

"Gain? I am simply a messenger," the Bothan demurred. "As I said, a gift. What you choose to do with it is absolutely none of my concern." He swept her a politely formal bow. "Now, if you'll permit me, I will take my leave. A pleasure to have met you, Lady Fel."

Abruptly the Dashades' stealth fields snapped on again, the four hulking monstrosities fading into thin air. The Bothan turned and started walking away, seemingly not possessing a care in the world.

She let him go. Despite a brief, compelling urge to lash out, she let him go.

A brief gesture to Celyanda – _Come_ – and she started walking rapidly. In her head, all she could see was Revan's face, as if it had been branded into her thoughts.

-s-s-

The shuttle docked with its target with a quiet _thunk_.

"Ready?" Yuthura asked quietly from beside him.

"Ready," Tamar agreed, unsnapping the safety harness. He could sense the nervous tension in her. It was reflected at least two-fold in himself. When all was said and done, they were taking a massive leap into the unknown.

The final destination of their flight was a vast, v-shaped flying wing, nearly two-kilometres from wingtip to wingtip. It flew slowly in broad, perpetual loops over the xoxin plains, half-gliding on the constant hot updrafts from below and half-powered by a series of huge, bizarrely anachronistic looking propellers.

The strange vessel apparently functioned as a flying hotel, half a dozen gleaming gondolas slung beneath it designed to house somewhere upwards of five hundred guests in luxurious comfort. It was to one of these gondolas that they'd just docked. According to the pilot, extensive renovation work had recently been completed and the flying hotel hadn't reopened to the public yet, so it was currently empty even of staff.

Somewhere, for good or ill, that they wouldn't be disturbed.

As he stood up, Tamar leant across the pilot, hitting a key combination to lockout the controls.

"Hey . . ." the pilot started to protest, but a rather pointed look cut him off.

"I don't suppose," Tamar told him quietly, "that your continued presence here will dissuade your employers from trying to arrange some kind of accident for us. But I think it's still worth a shot on the off chance."

With that, he and Yuthura headed for the airlock.

Beyond it, the gondola was every bit as deserted as they'd been told to expect. The absolute silence and stillness were distinctly eerie, only the very slight and distant vibration from the ship's propellers intruding even slightly. As they walked, patterns of lights on the walls formed directional arrows to guide them towards their destination. Wordlessly, they allowed themselves to be led.

A short time later, they were descending a flight of stairs leading to a viewing gallery right at the gondola's front tip.

He glanced across at Yuthura. She bared her teeth in a tight smile. Since boarding, neither of them had said a word.

The walls and floor around them were made of transparisteel, giving completely unrestricted – if somewhat vertiginous – views. Thousands of metres below, through a broken covering of coal-black cloud, the fires themselves could be glimpsed like a window into a traditional vision of hell. Occasionally, vast outcroppings of blackened and soot stained crystal could be spied, rising hundreds of metres above the surrounding inferno.

In the distance, lightning flickered near constantly. The quantities of ash in the air above the plains encouraged thunderstorms on a truly enormous scale.

"Interesting spectacle," Yuthura commented after a time, headtails stirring in something that Tamar recognised as profound disquiet. "Though not something I'd really like to try and crash land onto."

"The thought had occurred," he murmured softly.

Separating the viewing compartment down the middle into two halves, was a sheet of transparisteel. As he slowly walked the length of the divider, it became apparent that it was entirely seamless and thick enough that even lightsabers wouldn't cut it quickly. It didn't, no matter how he figured it, seem like it could possibly be an intended and original part of the hotel's design.

"It looks like Hulas doesn't entirely trust us," Yuthura said softly as she noticed the target of his scrutiny. Tamar didn't look round at her, but sensed her step up to his shoulder.

"No, it doesn't, does it." On the other side of the divider his gaze had fixed on another flight of stairs identical to the ones they'd so recently descended.

"And he's late too. Very impolite for a supposed host."

Tamar just nodded. His attention was suddenly somewhere deeper in the ship.

"Someone's coming." She voiced his thought.

Again he didn't do anything more than nod. There was a Force presence. A massively powerful, near-overwhelmingly strong Force presence that felt almost like an ambulatory tornado as it homed steadily in on them. Something about it was horribly familiar.

He heard Yuthura's breath hiss – sensed her drawing her lightsaber smoothly from her belt. She'd obviously reached the same conclusion he had.

Three pairs of booted feet came into view at the top of the steps, descending steadily towards them.

The three figures finished their descent and stood opposite them, separated only by the transparisteel sheet. They stared at one other in silence. Something clenched inside Tamar's gut. Sometimes, it wasn't until you got exactly what you wanted that you realised that you'd never truly wanted it at all.

Be careful what you wish for, indeed.

He took a deep breath – looked at his own face, reflected in _her_ mask. "Hello, Morrigance. Celyanda."


	19. Down in Flames

_Huge apologies to everyone for the length of time it's taken to get this chapter finished and posted. Also, many thanks again to Jedi Boadicea for the beta._

* * *

**19. Down in Flames**

_"Did you truly think that I would allow this to pass unanswered, Mal?" The voice from behind the mask was flat, hollow, metallic. No shred of humanity lurked within it._

_Morrigance felt cold as she stared at the viewscreen. Even separated from the two of them by a dozen decks and half a kilometre's distance she could feel the charge in the air. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, her skin prickling as though with crawling insects. And she knew the rest of the _Firebrand's_ crew felt it too, even those without the slightest hint of apparent Force sensitivity. It was similar to the way animals became panicked prior to an earthquake – senses they never knew they had suddenly tripping and telling them to run away as far and fast as possible. _Now

_If she hadn't known that he fully intended her to watch – that, in part, it was also a message to her – she would have turned the screen off and let her own instincts to flee have their way. Instead, she stood there, gritting her teeth so tightly that they squeaked, unable to feel a single shred of warmth._

_"If I knew what you were talking about, perhaps I could provide you with an answer." A noticeable and deliberate delay. "My Master."_

_Malak's shuttle had docked with Revan's flagship half an hour ago. No one aboard the _Firebrand_ – not even the lowliest technician – had missed the significance of that. Since then, the sheer tension had been a palpable presence, clinging like a grotesque monkey to their collective backs._

_Staring at the top of Malak's bald skull – the only part of him visible in the viewscreen – Morrigance found herself wondering what impact the amount of Force she sensed would have on the ship around them if it were to be fully unleashed. It almost seemed like it might tear the entire vessel apart – a thousand churning, tearing maws straining at the leash for the chance to ravenously devour._

_The two dark stars were now on unavoidable collision course, mutual event horizons breached. She couldn't help think that the inevitable result would be an explosion to match Cron Drift._

_And she was standing _much_ too close for comfort._

_"I have spent an inordinate amount of time of late defending your intelligence, my apprentice. I think it's time you showed me I wasn't mistaken in that appraisal."_

_In response Malak simply laughed._

_The sound of it chilled Morrigance to the core. There was no discernable fear. There was even less in the way of sanity._

_"If you refer to Telos, my master, I was obeying your explicit orders."_

_The drawn out silence was utterly excruciating._

_"It's strange. I seem to have misplaced my sense of humour somewhere." The glacial calm of Revan's voice made her heart thump. Behind the mask, he was smiling, she could tell. That scary empty smile where his eyes became hard mirrors and you didn't want to be anywhere in the same quadrant as he was. She didn't need to see._

_"You told me to ensure Karath's loyalty. To leave him with no way to change his mind. Did you think I would accomplish that by buying him a puppy?" There was still no fear. In fact, there seemed to be an eagerness. A dark and desperate glee._

_There would be no turning back now. Both of them wanted this, Morrigance could sense clearly. She shuddered, unsure anymore which of the two possible outcomes would be the worse._

_"Do you know how much careful diplomacy you have undone with that one clumsy action? A dozen systems on the verge of joining us now stand squarely as our foes. The entire __Hydian Way__ has re-ignited in conflict. Another front to the war we cannot afford."_

_"Diplomacy?" Malak's voice almost managed to be a purr. He stepped forward, further into the picture, the tattoos on his bald scalp lividly drawn bloodstains. "A strange word for the Dark Lord of the Sith to be uttering. I have brought our enemies to the fore. Goaded them into showing their true colours, so that now we might crush them _all_ together. I thought you would be pleased."_

_"Shall I show you _just_ how pleased I am?"_

_The tone of that voice – the inhuman, barely bridled power of it – appeared to penetrate through even Malak's madness._

_There was silence, dragging. Morrigance could hear her own breathing, far too loud._

_"You always emphasised the necessity of making sacrifices, Revan." This time Malak spoke quietly, almost calm. "Do you pity the people of Telos? Are you growing soft and weak?"_

_Watching, Morrigance almost laughed bitterly at those words. If anything the exact opposite was becoming true. The humanity was bleeding away drop by drop._

_"If so, then perhaps you should step aside for someone who _is_ capable of doing what is necessary. Someone who won't flinch. What are a few million more lives, when we consider Palastre and Xerxyon, and so many others? What are they to the billions that the Jedi Order sat back and sacrificed to the Mandalorians? If we falter now, what will any of it mean?"_

_"A sacrifice is only worthwhile if it gains you something you couldn't gain by other means. If you are going to throw my words back in my face, _apprentice_, at least try to remember _all_ of them."_

_Another pause. The seconds had swollen into separate miniature eternities. Revan stepped closer to Malak, and it seemed to Morrigance as if the entire universe bent and distorted around them._

_There _was_ fear on Malak's part now. She could feel it clearly. But unlike in the past, he seemed to be feeding from the fear as much as he did from the rage. It no longer acted as a restraining collar. Quite the opposite._

_"I have been lax, it seems," Revan finally continued. "You weren't testing Karath on Telos, were you Mal? You were testing me." _

_Abruptly, he clenched one black-gloved hand into a tight fist. Even at her distance, Morrigance felt the Force disturbance intensify. Malak though, stood firm._

_"To remain strong we must always be tested. Always challenged." This time Malak's words were ragged, as if he was struggling to draw breath._

_"And you chose to test me publicly, with all of the Sith an audience." Revan's voice was quiet – dense and dark. "So now you _know_ that I have to pass your test, just as publicly as it was issued. For all our years of friendship, you leave me with no choice here. Remember that."_

_"The Star Forge . . ." Malak began, gasping. "It gives me . . ."_

_"We are not on the Star Forge now!" A sharp gesture, the palm of his hand thrusting outwards. _

_Morrigance jolted violently in shock as Malak flew backwards out of camera shot._

_"So come now, Mal. Test me face to face. Seize the throne from my grasp if you've finally convinced yourself you have the strength and courage for it._

_"Or crawl on your knees and beg forgiveness."_

_There was a choked laugh, harsh and primal. Following a moment later came a soft snap-hiss, and a semi-circle of garish red light appeared in view. "You always did talk too much. My _Master_."_

_Lightning crackled. The display blanked out in a wall of static._

_Morrigance closed her eyes and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. She could hear her own blood rushing loudly in her ears. Abruptly she turned on heel and stalked out of there. Somewhere below and behind her, she could feel the Force surging – a violent, tumultuous storm that threatened to consume everything around it._

_She had gotten the message all right. It perhaps wasn't the message Revan had intended to send her, but she had received it nonetheless._

She studied his face through the transparisteel divider, struggling to control her breathing, aware that she had been silent for far too long. She could sense Celyanda's growing concern.

"Revan," she finally acknowledged him.

He smiled at her. It looked slightly sad.

That smile . . . it cut right through her, and hate flared, hot and bright.

"I think," he said calmly, seemingly oblivious of the reaction in her, "that we've both just made a very big mistake here."

-s-s-

As Bastila watched, the cigar slipped from between Canderous's mechanical fingers and dropped to the floor. He swore beneath his breath. Rather than the usual reflex muttering there seemed to be a genuine edge of underlying frustration to it.

He started to bend to retrieve the cigar, then stopped abruptly as he finally became aware of her presence. After a distinct pause, he turned to face her. His expression was sour, drawn with annoyance – though perhaps that was more with himself, and the fact he hadn't noticed her sooner.

"How long have you been there, Princess?" When he finally broke the silence it was halfway a growl.

"Not that long." But much longer than she'd normally expect to remain undetected near him.

She was staring, she realised after a moment. He was stripped to the waist, and his physique would have been remarkable enough on a man twenty years his junior. Stark black Ordo Clan tattoos stood out on pectoral muscles that looked as solid as reinforced permacrete, while his entire right side was such a mess of scar tissue that it more closely resembled knotted wood than flesh. There were faded, discoloured burns and, trailing down and out of sight around his hip, a vivid collection of deep gouges that looked like they'd been inflicted by a particularly vicious set of animal claws. A rough stripe of flesh across his chest was more recent than the rest, almost certainly inflicted by Darth Malefic's lightsaber.

Her gaze jerked abruptly back to his face. "I was told you were supposed to be in bed."

The doctor had seemed sure that he would still be sleeping off the after affects of the anaesthetics. He'd wanted to keep her out, but she'd played dense and ignored the hints.

Canderous's eyes glittered – fractionally amused. "Yeah? That right?"

Briefly, Bastila glanced at his right arm – the clear gel bandage where flesh and metal joined. It still looked painfully raw, despite the kolto. "Your implant doesn't make you immortal."

"No?" A nonchalant shrug. "Haven't died once in all the time I've had it."

She snorted. "The doctor also says you were offered a natural prosthetic, outwardly indistinguishable from the real thing. But instead you opted for that _thing_."

"Mandalorians wear their battle scars proudly. They don't try to hide." A contemptuous twist to his lips. "Besides, this was quicker. No artificial flesh to worry about. Works more efficiently too. Stronger." For emphasis, he clenched the metal hand into a fist. The soft whisper of micro-servos was clearly audible.

Bastila held his gaze a moment longer. Then, finally, she glanced down at where his dropped cigar lay. She noticed a second one, about a metre from the first, rolled up against the wall. This one appeared to have been badly mangled.

Canderous apparently noticed the direction of her gaze. "I'm told it will take a lot of practise to regain fine motor control." As she looked back at him, he lifted the hand in front of his face and waggled the metal fingers. She got the impression that even this took a considerable amount of concentration. "If I offer to shake hands with you in the near future . . ." A brief, savage looking grin as the metal hand clenched tight again. "My suggestion is that you politely decline."

"I'll bear that in mind." She bent down smoothly and picked up the less damaged of the two cigars.

"They're from a Drexl larva." His words made her freeze. "Those scars you were staring at so intently, I mean. My blooding quest."

Bastila felt a flare of heat rising to her cheeks, but managed to hold back the instinctive and utterly useless denial. Her lips clamped together, forming a tight line. Inwardly she could picture his expression – the cynical, wryly amused smirk – without having to look up.

"So, your blooding was on Dxun then?" When she did speak, her tone was entirely bland.

The noise he made was dismissive. "Of course not. But we exported that moon's wildlife to a number of our worlds. Good hunting, and they take pretty much anywhere with an oxygen atmosphere and something halfway resembling a food supply."

She stood up again, only looking back at him when she was sure that the colour had faded from her cheeks. "Isn't a Drexl rather ambitious prey for a twelve year old?" That was the age, she recollected, that the blooding typically took place.

One corner of his mouth turned up in a crooked half-smile, as if grudgingly impressed that she knew even that much. "I was actually hunting a Boma Beast. Unfortunately the Drexl larva had pretty much the same idea as I did." His eyes took on an oddly distant look, as if he was seeing directly back into an entirely different time. "In the end I proved I wanted it more."

A self-mocking snort followed a moment later. "Either that, or I had frak loads of high explosives and the Drexl larva didn't. One of the two."

Bastila held the cigar up. "I'm sure you're not meant to be smoking these right now."

"Something else the doctor told you, eh?" He seemed more amused than anything.

"I don't suppose it would make any difference if I asked you not to?"

"What are you? My wife?"

Bastila snorted quietly. "I wouldn't wish _that_ fate on my worst enemy."

For a moment, he just looked at her, oddly intent. "You are your worst enemy half the time."

Her teeth clicked together, but she managed to keep her retort in check. She jabbed the cigar roughly in the direction of his face. "Here."

Expression bland, he leant forward fractionally and took it between his teeth. "Lighter's on the table while you're at it."

She let her breath out slowly, then picked it up and turned it over in her hand. It felt surprisingly solid and heavy. Her fingertips traced across a dent in the back of it. The cool metal was roughly textured to allow for a better grip. "So whose corpse did you loot this off?"

The only response from him was a rumbling half-chuckle.

Her eyes snapped back to his face. "What's funny?"

"Since we're on the subject of wives here . . .. It was a gift."

Her surprise, at the tone of his voice as much as the words, was so total that she almost dropped the lighter entirely. "You're . . . you _were_ married?"

The look in his eyes was steely. For a moment, she didn't think he was going to answer. "It is the duty of every Mandalorian warrior to ensure the survival of the clan." Then. "Death rates are high. Birth rates have to be higher. It's the simplest kind of maths."

The words left her utterly nonplussed. There was no real reason for them to – in their own way, they made a perfect kind of sense. But she had never really looked at him in that way – as someone who might have had any part of life outside of war and violence. Her thoughts struggled to find some kind of order. "And you . . . you had children too."

He grunted. "Four."

"They're dead." She could tell by something in his expression.

"At Malachor," he confirmed.

There didn't really seem to be any appropriate response to that. "I . . . I'm sorry."

Something flared in his eyes. "Why? The youngest was as old as you are now, and saw more of war. More of life. They served Ordo and Mandalore with honour, and died gloriously in battle. What more is there for a Mandalorian?"

She just blinked, unable to answer.

"We don't mourn the dead. We especially don't mourn those who died as warriors."

Bastila groped for something else to say but came up blank. Instead, she opened the lighter, ignited it with a flick, and offered it to him.

The cigar still clamped between his lips, he leant forward and down, holding it to the flame. "Thank you."

Those two words made her jolt at their unexpectedness. She watched him as he inhaled the smoke deeply, his gaze off somewhere over her shoulder.

"And your wife?" The question slipped out without any conscious decision on her part, curiosity triumphing over any desire to move on to less . . . uncomfortable subjects.

"Wasn't my wife anymore by the time of Malachor. We'd raised our children to blooding age, seen our contract through and gone our separate ways years past. She lived through the battle. That much I know. After that . . ." He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Bastila stared at him. "You mean you don't know if she's even alive?" There was a note of incredulity in her voice.

"Any reason I should?" He sounded vaguely irritable.

"You never bothered to find out?" The incredulity became more shrill.

He snorted and gave a fractional shake of his head. "Why are you so interested in this anyway?"

"I . . ." Bastila felt her cheeks colouring again and trailed to halt.

Canderous wasn't looking at her directly though, and didn't appear to notice. "Mandalorians tend to have a . . . pragmatic outlook. Marriage is a business arrangement. Nothing more. Two Blooded warriors hammer out a contract between themselves to conceive and raise a specified number of children. After the contract runs its course, and responsibility for any offspring returns to the Clan, both parties usually go their separate ways."

"So love has nothing to do with it?"

He looked back at her. One corner of his mouth was fractionally upturned. Bastila wasn't sure if it was a smile or not. "It's not forbidden. We're not Jedi."

For a moment, they just looked at one another. He seemed to read the questions in her eyes with startling clarity. "Her name was Nor. Our time together . . . it wasn't entirely without affection, though we never were able to agree on much."

Bastila made a noise halfway between snort and laugh. "Now why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Couldn't even agree on the contract terms. We had to take it to the battle circle for arbitration." As he spoke, his hand moved to a vivid white scar slightly above a collarbone that looked to have been broken more than once. "She was a strong warrior. Extremely skilled. I was only wearing scout armour, but even so. It takes a lot of effort to get one of our duelling blades through it to the flesh, never mind out the other side again."

Bastila tried to work out if she'd understood correctly. "Let me get this straight. You couldn't agree marriage terms, so you fought your wife-to-be in a duel?"

"That's about the size of it."

"And not only that, you lost?" She couldn't entirely keep the amusement out of her voice at this bit of information.

His still human hand came up and scratched the tip of his nose. "Never said that now, did I? Nor made exactly that same mistake too. Thought that just because I had a sword sticking through my shoulder I was beaten." The grin around his cigar was savage – strangely gleeful. "I broke her wrist, jaw, nose and eye socket. She didn't regain consciousness again for nearly two days."

There seemed to be an immense satisfaction in his tone as he said this.

Bastila stared at him. "And she still went ahead and married you? Even after that."

"Of course. That was already decided. We were just ironing out the fine print." He seemed to consider for a moment. "Didn't improve her looks any, I have to admit."

She shook her head. "You're making all this up."

He just smirked. "Yeah? Now why exactly would I go to all the trouble of making up stories just for your benefit, eh Princess?"

Another frustrated headshake and she turned away from him, wondering whether she should leave. There was a vague feeling that she hadn't addressed the reasons she'd had for coming to see him, but it wasn't as though she could even say what those reasons were in the first place. And she was realising more and more that she didn't have any kind of natural feel for even the most trivial kinds of human interaction.

"Why aren't you with Revan, anyway?" Canderous's words snapped through her indecision. "I'm guessing he didn't put his plans on hold on my account." A pause. "If he did, he's an idiot."

She grimaced. "No, he went ahead. It all started a few hours ago." And the vague senses that occasionally flashed across the bond were another reason for her discomfort.

"But you're still here." The implied question was obvious.

Bastila exhaled. She could suddenly feel an uncomfortable fluttering sensation in her stomach – something she'd previously been managing to suppress without even realising it. "I wasn't invited."

The noise he made managed to convey exasperation very succinctly. "You let a minor detail like that stop you?" Then, muttered: "Absolutely fraking hopeless."

Her head snapped round, though the glare she shot him bounced off the equivalent of reinforced durasteel.

"C'mon then." He stepped decisively past her. "Let's go and pull his fat from the fryer. I've spent far too much time sitting on my backside of late anyway."

-s-s-

He trudged through a bleak grey forest, utterly alone.

He couldn't say where he was, let alone how he had gotten there. In fact, he realised eventually, he couldn't even say for sure _who_ he was. Vague shapes and glimpses of movement – silvered fish flashing through dark water – moved beneath the surface of his thoughts, but there was nothing he could truly call a memory. Every time he attempt to grasp hold of something and bring it up into the light, it slipped through his fingers and dwindled further away than ever.

So he concentrated on walking. That was a certain thing, and the forest . . . something about the forest made him profoundly uneasy. Walking, even if he had no idea where he was, or where he was going, at least gave the prospect of leaving it behind.

He couldn't remember how long he'd been walking anymore than he could remember anything else.

It was like there was a mist obscuring his vision, tree trunks resolving out of blank greyness only a few metres in front of him and vanishing entirely an equal distance behind. Except . . . there was no mist that he could see. Part of him wondered uneasily if the forest was simply creating itself spontaneously around him and didn't exist at all except for the short radius around him.

He stopped, the unease growing cancerously within him. Now that he couldn't hear his own footsteps, the silence seemed infinitely vast.

He found himself staring at one of the tree trunks in front of him. It was blackened as if from intense heat, the charcoaled surface cracked and oddly shiny. And it stretched high up into the blank greyness overhead, vanishing into the mist that wasn't. There was no hint of foliage. No sign of life.

"I used to have a toy that looked just like you."

The unexpectedness of voice had him spinning round towards its source. His surroundings gyrated disorientingly, not quite real.

"His name was Mr Muggles. I lost him when we had to go away. On the big ships."

The speaker was a human child, who seemed to have materialised out of nothing between two of the trees. He wasn't sure how to gage a human child's age accurately, but this one seemed particularly small and had dark skin. A faintly whispering recollection told him it was likely a boy rather than a girl, though again he wasn't entirely certain.

"Are you my toy? Are you here for me to play with?"

"I . . . don't think so." His own voice sounded unfamiliar and uncertain when he finally managed to find it, drowning within the endless grey. "Do you know where we are?"

The child was staring at him with intense curiosity. "You shouldn't be here. This is where the witch lives. The crazy wormhead. You don't want to let her catch you wandering around. She's gone _mean_."

"The witch?" Every single thing about the situation felt utterly wrong.

The child nodded solemnly. "Your eyes look funny."

He started to open his mouth – to ask what was funny about them – when the child let out a startled yelp.

"She's found us. She's coming. Run!"

Abruptly everything spun and blurred for a second time, and he had a vague sense of something small streaking past him at breathtaking speed. When his vision cleared again, he was alone again, the child nowhere to be seen.

The silence was as deep as ever, and he realised after a moment that he'd gotten turned around. There was nothing nearby that remotely resembled a landmark, and he had no way of knowing which way he had come from, or which way he'd been going. He glanced down at the ground – grey and textureless, like everything except the burnt and blackened trees – but there was no sign of any tracks he could use as a guide.

He opened his mouth – to call out to the child to wait; to come back – but something else caught his attention. Stopped him dead.

There was a brightness amid the endless grey

It was coming towards him, getting nearer. His eyes – _funny eyes_ – struggled to focus. It looked like . . . dancing blue flame.

Blue flame. _The witch_. Something stirred deep within, and the surface of the dark water erupted.

Everything came back then in a shocking rush of images that left him dazed. Kamari Station. Carth Onasi. Revan. Sith assassins. And of course, the Catcher, standing before him and grinning as crackling blue fire grew around him in a perpetually shifting corona.

With the images came knowledge.

Knowledge that he was dead. Of trying to join with the Force, but being pulled brutally back from it, into something _else_.

Ulvol Ellas – or whatever there was still left of him at least – gasped. His legs – _legs?_ – buckled beneath, dropping him to his knees as everything around him twisted and writhed chaotically.

The blue flames drew closer, resolving into a definite and solid shape.

-s-s-

The flames flared briefly, gleaming in the Catcher's eyes before dying down and fading away to nothing.

He let his hand drop back to his side, baring his teeth in a grin that had nothing at all to do with humour. Acrid tendrils of smoke still curled up from the charred body that lay – curled into a foetal ball – on the soot-stained carpet beside him.

His gaze took in the stretch of Coruscant skyline visible through the apartment's window, though it was still the images that flickered in his mind's eye – the knowledge and experience of the life he had so recently taken – that held the majority of his attention.

Eventually he let those images fade and bleed away. There was nothing of the prey he sought out in them. At least not directly. The security guard had been a fairly recent employee it seemed, starting work in the past couple of months, after Dustil Onasi had already departed from this place for good.

That in itself was interesting . . . though not especially helpful.

It wasn't a total loss though. There was one interesting image to be found amid the banality and dross.

A woman in plain Padawan's robes, asking after this apartment's occupant. Young, attractive. Powerfully earnest and intense.

_May. Thalia May_. That was the name the security guard had known her by.

Turning and walking to the door, the Catcher began to ponder upon the best way of reaching inside the Jedi Temple.

-s-s-

"No! Hold, Celyanda!"

Morrigance's snapped words made Tamar jolt. The surging maelstrom of Force surrounding the golden pair seemed to rein in just slightly, but it was still almost overpowering, drowning out all sense of anything else around them. Beside him, Yuthura's lightsaber had ignited, the harsh violet glare from it reflecting off the transparisteel between them.

Heart hammering, mouth dry, he lifted a staying hand.

If the situation turned to violence then there wasn't likely to be a positive outcome. Celyanda's presence altered the balance of the situation entirely and made a nonsense of any pretensions that they were in control here.

Yuthura shot him a questioning look, but after a short delay inclined her head. Her lightsaber snapped off again, the purple glare fading to leave just the light from the flames below.

His thoughts raced as he tried to discern a way out.

Morrigance broke the uneasy silence. "I once knew someone who said that every decision was a mistake of one kind or another. That you just have to stop being afraid of them."

He stared at the mirrored mask in front of him. The voice that issued from it was far too bland and unfeeling to read anything from. "That would have been me, I'm guessing?"

Morrigance's head inclined the merest of fractions.

"Wow, I really was a pompous ass, wasn't I?"

"Some might say nothing much has changed." There was a tinge of amusement.

It was his turn to incline his head in acknowledgement. He suspected that his attempted smile didn't quite come off.

"So what is this 'very big mistake' both of us have made then?" she asked.

Celyanda's Force presence overwhelmed hers to such an extent that he could barely sense her at all. There was a definite sardonic edge to the words though, and something else – deeper and harder underlying. It made his skin prickle.

"Underestimating Hulas and the Genoharadan." It was something of a surprise to him that his voice was so controlled – so conversational. "Concentrating so firmly on each other that we've lost sight of _them_ entirely." He spread his hands. "And look at where we are now, together. I thought I was using him to help bait a trap, but now I can't help but wonder if it was the other way round entirely."

"Indeed." Again, there was a suggestion of faintly bitter amusement.

"We've started turning," Yuthura interrupted with quiet urgency. "And descending."

Tamar's gaze dropped fleetingly to the floor beneath his feet. The black cloud tops looked as far below as ever, though he knew better than to argue. A Twi'lek's lekku helped impart an extraordinary sense of balance. She would inevitably be the first among them to notice any change.

"Interesting company you keep," he said to Morrigance quietly. "I assume this means Darth Auza is no longer with us?"

"Sadly not."

Inwardly, a voice mocked him – standing conversing politely with a Sith Lord as they went down together into the inferno. "I'm curious. All those droids in orbit here. Yours or his?"

Despite the mask, he could feel her eyes crawling over him then – their contemptuous hate. "His. To start with anyway. You met him, Revan. I'm sure you experienced some of his more . . . charming characteristics at first hand. Stir up tensions. Have others fight the wars while he sits safe and sound, firmly out of harm's way. That was always his favoured way of doing things."

He nodded – forced another smile for effect. "Well thank you anyway. I'm _sure_ I'll be able to find a use for them."

He could feel the air crackling then as silence settled in. His gaze moved past Morrigance briefly to Celyanda, but they stood there completely impassively, inert as dolls. Even their eyes looked blank and glassy.

A downward glance showed that they definitely _were_ descending. The cloud tops were noticeably closer, shot through with lines of orange fire. And now he could feel that they were turning too – the subtle but definite shift in acceleration forces.

"Shall we stop playing games here, Revan?"

His eyes snapped back to Morrigance. "Let's."

More seconds ticked by. Tamar was aware of Yuthura stepping away from him, giving him space if the worst came to the worst. She seemed to be listening to something – Jolee and the _Rancorous_, hopefully. "As I see it, there are basically two ways this can go."

"Only two?" The sardonic edge was back, even stronger than before.

He shrugged. Any hint of nonchalance in it was purely surface. "We can be Sith about it. Go down fighting. Crash and burn together."

"Or?"

"Or we can come to an agreement and all walk away."

"How wonderfully simple and agreeable you make it all sound." Sarcasm dripped.

"Oh, it is simple." His own voice became hard then – reinforced durasteel beneath a layer of Hoth ice. "Quite utterly simple. How much, exactly, is your vengeance worth to you, Morrigance? I think you have a choice to make."

The words froze on his lips. The floor beneath him seemed to tilt beneath him, and abruptly the world around him slid away.

_He was lying, naked, in a bed that was somehow both strange and familiar at once, covered in drying sweat and filled with a weary, muscle-deep ache. _

_Gauzy curtains stirred in a turgidly warm breeze, and there was an air of hazy languidness to the whole scene. His thoughts were slow and pleasantly blurred as he lay there. _

_One entire wall of the bedchamber opened onto a balcony and the night sky, three moons reflecting back enough of the local star's light for it to be bright as twilight on most planets. The smallest of the three moons was bright red, like a malevolent eye gazing down directly at him._

_Strangely, he found that idea amusing._

_A woman stood upon the balcony with her back to him, pale skinned and silvered by the moonlight, lithe and athletic with long, straight black hair._

_She glanced back at him, over her shoulder. Her face was coldly beautiful, her eyes as hard as steel chips and filled with a trapped desperation._

The same, familiar vision, absolutely identical to the one that had come to him on an orbital station above Coruscant, seemingly so long ago now. The same vision he had spent so much time and effort poring over, trying to pick the details from and understand.

This time it lasted just a couple of seconds longer.

_He felt himself open his mouth and distantly heard a voice both strange and dreadfully familiar. "I think, Morrigance, you have a choice to make."_

-s-s-

"I'm sorry sir, please step away. I cannot let you pass," the hovering police sentry droid repeated blandly, for the fourth time in less than a minute.

The last fragile thread of Carth's temper frayed and snapped. "Damn it, droid! Get the hell out of my way. For the last time. I am Captain Carth Onasi of Republic Fleet Command, and this apartment belongs to my son!" He could hear his own breathing as it rasped between his gritted teeth, barely in control. The surface of rage covered over a deep well of pounding fear.

_They'd gotten here too late. They'd . . .._ He swallowed thickly, struggling to reimpose a veneer of composure. "Now. I am going to go inside, and you are going to let me. Am I clear?"

"I'm sorry sir, please step away. I cannot let you . . ."

Carth blotted the dreary monotone out and tried to barge past it. The droid refused to give ground, veering to block his path as he moved to swerve around its floating bulk. The pair of stun-sticks it was armed with crackled ominously to life . . .

And just as suddenly went dead. The droid's repulsors cut out with a dull whine and it dropped to the floor with a thud.

He stared at it, nonplussed, struggling to work out what had just happened.

Yolanda's voice beside his ear made him jolt. "It works like a restraining bolt." As she spoke his gaze settled on a small metal device that had clamped itself to the now inert police droid's out casing. "I hope that being 'Captain Carth Onasi of Republic Fleet Command' actually has some kind of weight here, because doing that to a police operative counts as a serious assault and carries up to a three year custodial sentence." By the sound of her voice, she wasn't remotely worried about that prospect.

He just grunted, stepping round the fallen droid's bulk and striding towards the apartment's door. His mouth was dry and he could feel coldly panicked sweat crawling down the back of his neck.

"Hold up a moment Carth." There was an exasperated intake of breath. "I've been talking to the building manager . . ."

Ignoring her, he ducked beneath the holo-seal on the door and pushed inside.

And stopped dead in his tracks. Suddenly his skull was pounding so hard it made his vision blur. There were four more droids of various designs going about the business of evidence gathering, but Carth was barely even aware of them. Instead, he simply stared at the groundsheet covering the centre of the room – the telltale shape of the bulge beneath it.

Dimly he could feel himself hyperventilating – struggling to draw air down a throat that seemed to have closed to a pinhole.

It was Telos again, the taste of the air bitter and acrid with hanging smoke. He was running through the piles of wreckage that had once been buildings and streets, lit by columns of cherry-red flame burning along the horizon line, and growing more and more frantic with each passing moment. A scattering of survivors milled listlessly, gathering around a supply drop station. At the sight of his Republic uniform, a dozen different voices started shouting out at once in an overlapping cacophony. Hands clutched at him, but he shrugged them off, heedlessly pressing forward. Their words – their pleas and protests – bounced off, unheard.

But of course, the house was no more intact than the surrounding street. Or block. Or city.

As he knelt amid the debris, face and hands coated in grey dust, he was aware of a voice shouting his name. But he couldn't look round. Couldn't look up . . .

Shoving the past away, he took a deep breath. His hands were shaking as he reached for the sheet, though a sense of detached unreality had settled in. It felt as if he'd been hollowed out entirely.

The sheet came back. Carth let out a breath, his hands coming up to cover his face.

It wasn't him. It wasn't Dustil. One of the droids jabbered at him angrily, but he ignored it.

Only the face of the corpse had escaped relatively unscathed. The rest of the body was badly blackened and charred, barely recognisable. It was enough though, for Carth to tell immediately that this had been a much older man, somewhere in his forties or early fifties – no one he had seen before.

Given the fact that the rest of apartment was more or less unmarked, it was easy enough to imagine what had happened. Closing his eyes he could picture the Catcher standing there in the centre of the room over the smouldering corpse, grinning.

"I tried to tell you." Yolanda's hand touched his shoulder lightly, making him flinch. "I talked to the building manager. He told me that your son left the premises about three months ago. He hasn't been seen since."

It took a few seconds to sink in.

"What?" Carth's head snapped round sharply. The questions boiled over. "Why? Where did he go? Why didn't anyone stop him? Where the hell is he now?" The same droid as before continued to beep stridently. He continued to block it out.

Yolanda's expression managed to convey a level of exasperation that even he couldn't miss, regardless of his mental state. "Look, I get the impression that Dustil didn't bother leaving a forwarding address. As to why . . .?" She shook her head. "The building manager did say that he was visited by a pair of 'busybody Jedi types' shortly before he took off." She fixed his gaze with her, the set of her jaw tight. "You're his father. You tell me the 'why'. You'd know better than me."

He looked away from her without saying anything. However much progress he sometimes seemed to be making, it kept being hammered home. He didn't know his son at all.

"This . . . was a security guard. He only started working here recently. After Dustil had already gone. The Catcher couldn't have learned anything useful, and this means he can only be a few hours ahead of us. We'll find your son first."

Carth still didn't say anything. Yolanda's words were . . . logical, but any comfort they provided was purely notional.

_Damn it Dustil . . ._

But the thought cut off abruptly. If Dustil hadn't run when he had. If he'd still been here . . .. That really didn't bear thinking about. Abruptly – grimly – he started walking, striding out of the apartment.

Behind him, he heard Yolanda's hissed intake of breath, followed by rapid footsteps as she hurried to keep up with him. "And where are we going, exactly?"

His answer was short – snapped. "The Jedi Temple."

And they _would_ give him the answers he needed. He wasn't going to take no for an answer.

-s-s-

_"A choice?" Morrigance echoed. The expression on Revan's face . . . it cut straight through her own anger and left her suddenly very scared indeed. She had seen that expression before, but never directed towards her. "What, exactly, do you mean?"_

_He stood up, expression unchanging. Her eyes couldn't help but flick across the fresh scars that adorned his flesh, remnants of his recent battle with Malak._

_And that in turn, inevitably, drew her mind onto what he had done to Malak when apprentice had finally fallen, collapsing to his knees before the master, his lightsaber fallen from his grasp. The final coup de grace had been withheld, although that had proven in the end to be the exact opposite of the mercy it at first appeared._

_His expression had been disturbingly similar then too, calmly lifting Malak's jaw and forcing him to look him in the eye._

_"I can't help but notice that you seem to have been . . . distracted of late. As if your attention has become divided."_

_Something inside her chest clenched tight, and all the heat drained out of the air at once. The reflected light of Nagslim's eye tainted the night with blood. His tone, on the surface, had been light and casual, but that was always when it was at its most dangerous. Still waters, she had learned, tended to cover the most devious and deadly traps._

_She forced herself to remain totally calm. "If you feel that I have somehow not been performing my duties satisfactorily . . ."_

_He chuckled dryly. "Now that isn't quite what I said, is it?"_

_Her hand came up and pushed her hair back from her face. Her lips compressed, but she said nothing, snatching up a robe and pulling it on. She no longer felt even remotely comfortable under his gaze._

_"I don't question either your skill or your application," he went on. "Or the results you produce. All that has always been exemplary."_

_"Then what _do_ you question?" Morrigance struggled to suppress a shiver. "My loyalty?"_

_"Not . . . precisely."_

_There was only blank impassivity in his expression as he said this. Reflected in his eyes, she couldn't help but see the ruin of Malak's jaw – hear the tormented gurgle of his breathing._

_"If I doubt anything it is your . . . commitment."_

_Again, it became a struggle to breathe. "I assure you, I remain fully committed to seeing our work through, right until the end."_

_"Our work?" He was smiling. Nowadays that smile seldom boded well. "Do you truly still see this work as ours?"_

_She bit her tongue. She knew that right then he would sense a lie._

_"I know that I am not the only one to share your bed." So, so casual the way he said it._

_"Jealous?" As she spoke, Morrigance watched him move to take her place on the balcony, bathed in the light of the moons. His normally lithe, smoothly padding movements betrayed a stiffness – a lingering discomfort. Three entire decks of the _Firebrand _had been had been utterly wrecked, and his flagship was now secretly docked in the Dantalus shipyards, undergoing emergency refurbishment. Over fifty full-scale engagements had done less damage than two Sith Lords vying against each other for supremacy. "I don't imagine I have exclusive call on your affections either."_

_His laughter sounded genuinely amused, though that did little to ease the tension. "Would it surprise you to know that you do?"_

_She heard her own teeth click together. _

_"Although that," he went on, "is more a practical consideration than anything else. Don't worry yourself, Morrigance. I am not a sentimental man, and I do not read more into our . . . association than there is. Any relationships you choose to pursue are your business. Provided that they do not interfere."_

_"So why bring it up?" That was the question really making her nervous._

_He didn't answer right away. There was a strange half-smile on his lips, his teeth reflecting white. "Because I know you are using your new _amusee_ to build yourself an escape route. A way for you to cut and run."_

_Her face felt brittle as she struggled to keep it impassive._

_Not impassive enough, obviously. _

_"You may have brought your own people in around you, but a Sith is a Sith, new or old. In the end we all look to ourselves first and foremost." He almost sounded slightly . . . regretful._

_"Isn't it only sensible to maintain contingencies for all possible eventualities?" No sense denying. That was one of the worst things she could do. She attempted to keep her tone of voice unconcerned. "I thought you of all people would appreciate that."_

_"Don't play games with me, Morrigance."_

_She jolted hard. His voice remained soft, but the change of intonation was marked – deadly._

_"And no need to be so afraid."_

_She took a deep breath. "Should I not fear my master's anger?"_

_He looked away, gazing out at the view spread out before him. "I am not angry with you, Morrigance."_

_"Disappointed then?"_

_"Not even that." He sounded almost reflective then. "I have no escape route planned. You know that?"_

_The words startled her. In her experience, he had contingencies in place for every possibility that could be predicted. Or at least, nothing ever seemed to catch him unprepared. _

_"The closer that victory approaches the harder it becomes, does it not? With each action we are required to take now . . . sometimes you catch yourself thinking that defeat would be easier. Simpler. It is inevitable I think. I feel it too – what if I could just stop and walk away, leaving all this infernal machinery I have built behind me?"_

_She saw him shake his head. "With what is to come, if either of us leaves ourselves the luxury of a way out, we _will_ take it. That is inevitable too." _

_Somewhere in the distance, a night bird let out a strange, ululating cry._

_He turned back from the view. There was a ferocious intensity to his expression. It startled her into a rapid backwards step. "We succeed or we go down in flames. That is the only choice we can allow ourselves."_

_"And that is the choice you spoke of?" Her voice, when she found it, sounded ever so slightly hoarse._

_"Your choice . . . close off your escape route. Stand beside me. See this through."_

_"Or?"_

_He shrugged. "Or walk away, I suppose."_

_"And you would just stand aside and let me go?"_

_He simply looked at her; said nothing._

_No, of course he wouldn't simply stand aside. Of course not. He couldn't, especially not now with Malak._

_"I will do what is necessary." With that she turned and walked out of their shared bedchamber, into the heart of the ancient Rakatan ruins Revan had transformed into a private villa on a world unknown to either the Republic or the Sith – a world that the primitive indigenous population called Honoghr. _

_She found herself wondering, and trying to pinpoint at exactly which point Revan had gone completely mad._

He was staring straight at her, shock written large on his face.

And at that moment, Morrigance knew with utter certainty that he had shared that . . . intrusion from the past. That they had both been there together, then as now. Part of her wondered, as she struggled to hold onto the tattered shreds of her composure, if he had experienced exactly what she had, or if he had watched the scene from entirely his own perspective. Part of her wondered if the memory had been her own or his.

"That was why I . . ." A breath. "I mutilated you. You tried to leave me? To run?"

"No. I didn't try to run. I judged myself much cleverer than that."

"I . . . " He seemed to be struggling to form coherent words, so far removed from the him of the past that the absurdity of it all seemed laughable. "I had you kill your own lover?"

That startled bitter laughter from her. "Oh please. You make it all sound like some dreadful two-bit melodrama written by a committee of incompetent hacks. When they took your memories, I hadn't realised that the Jedi Council had also turned you into a child."

That at least seemed to strike home, his expression taking on the look of someone who'd just been slapped. "If you want revenge . . ."

"You will willingly sacrifice yourself upon the altar of my hate." Behind her mask, Morrigance could feel her teeth grinding. "Are you actually naïve enough to think this is anything at all to do with revenge on you?"

Out of the corner of her eye, she tracked Yuthura, who had drifted unobtrusively to stand next to the stairs leading up out of the viewing compartment. The Twi'lek appeared to be listening to something, and not anything that was taking place directly around her. The behaviour left Morrigance fractionally disturbed and she directed a quick thought towards Celyanda to cover her.

"If this is not about revenge, then what is it? What _are_ you doing? Why did you kill the Jedi Council?"

Her gaze flicked back to Revan, her eyes focussing on his face – striving to see through the surface veneer to something that had to be there.

Except she couldn't find it.

"Why did I kill the Jedi Council?" She tasted bile in her mouth, and the bitterness flowed over into her words. "Isn't that what Sith do? Why do you think, Revan? Dazzle me with your profound insights. Please."

The clouds tops were only a few metres below the transparisteel bottom of the gondola now. They appeared to be so dense as to be solid, scudding by at breathless speed. The occasional breaks between them presented fleeting windows into burning red hell, gone too quickly to form more than the vaguest subconscious impression. It was difficult to escape the naggingly ridiculous notion that once the gondola finally hit the clouds it would be torn apart, sending them all tumbling into the ravenous flames . . ..

"I don't know. I have no insight here."

Something about the tone of his voice and the way he was looking at her made Morrigance's breath catch.

"You really want to know what I'm doing, Revan? Why I killed the Council?" She spoke then without really meaning to, hatred flaring white-hot and burning through her self-control. "I'm doing what you should be doing. I'm doing your job."

-s-s-

"Now, if I ask you what you were doing again, is it going to provoke another temper tantrum?" Kreed folded his bulk carefully into the seat set in front of the cell and smiled. That smile, he knew well enough, was generally considered to be rather unnerving.

"Frak off."

Kreed shrugged – a casual shifting of polished metal plates. "You know, this cell's last long term occupant was so much more inventive and original than you. You could've learned a lot from her."

Hooded green eyes bored into him furiously. The malice in them was quite startlingly intense.

Kreed just smirked in response, using the opportunity to study the cell's occupant more closely. Young he decided at length, despite the size and outward hardness. Seventeen. Maybe less. Not old enough for his beard to grow in more than patches.

Of course, youth was relative. For a Mandalorian, seventeen could mean a veteran.

His hands bore calluses and scars, oil and grease ground into the crevices and underneath the nails. The fake ID he'd been carrying indicated he was a mechanic, and it looked like he'd at least been working that cover story. Nothing Kreed saw adequately explained Rath's eagerness to keep hold of him.

Nikos, the ID had said his name was.

He shaped his smirk into a savage grin. "I suppose Shak's been telling you how much I like teenage boys? How much I enjoy . . . breaking them in? He's a fraking nasty bastard, is Shak. Even by Trandoshan standards."

'Nikos' looked down rapidly.

"Shak's a liar though. You shouldn't believe a word of it." He paused for effect. "Well . . . not _everything_, at any rate."

Kreed saw him swallow and his grin grew even wider. "So anyway, if you don't feel like trying to have a nice, polite conversation with me, I can understand that. I can always turn that disruption collar you're wearing up to maximum and sit here watching you drool and twitch."

There was no response forthcoming.

"Then, while you're out of it . . . well, I sometimes get these urges." Kreed shook his head in mock sadness. "A spacer's life gets lonely."

"You even try touching me, you fraking Mandalorian freak, and I'll gut you."

Kreed chuckled dryly. "Oh, I'm sure you would, kid. If you could still touch the Force."

Nikos couldn't quite stop himself from flinching. Not that Kreed had truly needed any confirmation on that score. "What the frak are you talking about?"

It sounded defiant, but to Kreed's ears, it rang entirely false. Switching to the infrared view his artificial eye afforded only confirmed the accuracy of that assessment. The lie was written on his face in lingering patches of heat.

"Defels aren't that good with the fine detail of human emotion. A walking shadow can't have much use for facial nuance, can it? But even Drex spotted your reaction."

Nikos opened his mouth as if to hurl another insult, then apparently thought better of it. A moment later, he said: "I'm not a Jedi."

It came out so sullen that Kreed was tempted to revise his estimate on his age downwards. He leant back in the chair and folded his arms. "Now that," he said quietly, "is the first thing you've said to me that I actually believe."

Nikos's head shot up. There was surprise mixed in with the usual venom.

"I've fought Jedi. Killed at least a dozen of them, and watched them cut down my kin and battle brothers in turn. And while you kind of look the part, I've never met a one – not even the rawest Padawan – who was a sulky little boy."

Heat flared in Nikos's cheeks, but he didn't say anything. His gaze dropped and he appeared to be inspecting the backs of his hands.

"So, we have ourselves a Force user who isn't a Jedi. Where does that leave us, I wonder?"

No answer of course, and if he was honest, Kreed hadn't expected one. "My guess would be a Sith. No more than an apprentice, but I can see you in the uniform. Swaggering, cocksure. A real bullying little asshole."

The flush to his cheeks was obvious – anger, embarrassment; maybe shame. "That from a Mandalorian. Can you even spell hypocrite?"

Kreed laughed – a harsh, barking sound. "Now that's much better. Finally, we're getting somewhere. So. You're a deserter. Or maybe an escaped prisoner of war. I guess the difference doesn't matter much."

"Yeah. We're both murdering scum together." Nikos snorted.

Kreed shrugged. "Oh, I'm not judging you, kid. Don't get that impression. I'm more . . . thinking aloud. Trying to work out why you were sneaking round our ship."

Temper flashed. "I already told you!"

"Yeah." Kreed's metal hand came up and made a show of stroking his chin. "You were scoping out the _Corvine_, looking to see if you could either stowaway or maybe even steal it. So you say."

"It's the truth!"

"No. No it's not." Kreed didn't bother to explain about his eye and what it allowed him to see. Instead he said: "If you really were looking to do either of those things you'd have made up a lie to cover yourself. It's instinctive. People lie when cornered. Human nature."

"I don't believe this. The reason I'm locked up in this cell . . . you're holding the fact I was actually honest with you against me?"

Kreed simply kept on looking at him and waited for him to fill the silence.

Which, of course, he did. "Look." There was a hint of desperation now. "I saw what I was dealing with. Anyone who employs Defels. Mandalorians. Anyone who can . . ." He trailed off; swallowed. "I figure that kind of person is not someone I want to be messing with. I made a mistake coming anywhere near your ship. I just want to get out of here."

That bit at least was undoubtedly the truth. If it had just been down to him, Kreed wouldn't have bothered with any of this. He'd have either let him go or shot him in the back of the head to be on the safe side. He wasn't quite sure which.

_What the hell are you playing at here Rath? Why do you want him?_

"So tell me the truth. Tell me all of the truth." Kreed leant forward until his face was mere centimetres from the forcefield separating them.

"I am telling the truth, you stupid bantha-spawned bastard!"

More silence. Kreed sat back again and waited, letting a small smile play across his lips.

Nikos drew in a deep breath. There were twin spots of colour on his cheeks. "Look, okay. I think I get it. You're looking to make some money out of me, right?"

"A mercenary looking to make some money? That's quite the suggestion there. I think I feel offended." It came out as a sardonic drawl.

"You're going to be disappointed." There was a rising note of desperation now. "What I'm running from . . . you were right about the Sith bit, okay? I was an . . . an apprentice, like you say. Not a very good one." He rubbed his hands over his face. "Now that's all catching up to me, and it's going to burn everyone around me. If you know about the Sith, Mandalorian – and I'm sure you do – you'll know they can't be reasoned with. They'll kill all of you just for having been near me. If you actually try to sell me to them . . ."

"Sith die, kid. Just like Jedi die. We have our talents." For the first time though, he had the sense that he might be getting beneath the surface here. It was a bit like picking your way through a minefield. That was all.

Then something clicked.

Kreed almost swore aloud. _Damn you, Rath . . _..

And of course, he had to include himself in his berating. How stupid had it been to believe that Rath had actually seen reason and decided to let go of his obsessions? Just how fraking stupid? But it had been exactly what he wanted to hear . . . go to Coruscant, half a galaxy away from the Maw cluster in just about every possible respect, and seek out new work there. Put everything from the past few months behind them and start again. A long, long way from Revan.

_Yeah, right. Ronto-loving idiot._

"You recognised this ship, didn't you 'Nikos'?" It came out harsh and brutal, though the anger was all directed inwardly. "That's why you were sneaking round. Because you recognised it under a name that's not the _Corvine_."

There was enough reaction in the kid's expression to give away the truth. "W-What are you talking about?"

"You knew its former owners, I'm betting. Must have been a shock when you found us on board instead."

Nikos didn't manage to cover his reaction very well, and from the chagrined looked that followed, he knew it.

"What's your real name, kid? It sure as frak ain't Nikos."

The expected silence followed of course, though Kreed didn't let that worry him. "What's your connection to Revan? Why would you be a useful hostage to my boss?"

This time the shock and alarm was clearly visible.

"I'm asking this for your benefit as much as mine, kid. You've blundered your way neck deep into the bantha crap here, and right now – believe it or not – I'm probably going to be the closest thing you're going to find to someone who's willing to help pull you out."

Nikos stared down at the floor.

Briefly, Kreed watched his shoulders rise and fall in time to his breathing. Abruptly, his face twisted into a snarl. "I don't have time for this, kid. You want to sit there stewing in your own bile, then fine. I've got better things to do."

_Like pounding your face flat, Rath. You devious heap of mynock dung. What the frak have you got us into now?_ He started walking.

"Wait."

Kreed stopped walking. "Make it good, kid. Make it very good."

"I – I need to get a message to someone. Please." His voice sounded hollow. "They're . . . in danger. If I don't get out of here they're probably going to end up dead."

"Appealing to a Mandalorian's better nature." Kreed snorted after a lingering pause. "Well there's a novelty."

But he turned around.

-s-s-

"We got it. Much good may it do us."

Jolee's voice came over Yuthura's earpiece accompanied by a shrill whine of static. The gondola had pierced the roiling sea of black cloud now, plunging the interior into semi-darkness as skeins of mist whipped past the windows, wailing thinly like damned spirits. If anything, the rate of their slow-spiralling descent had increased during the last couple of minutes, the angle of the floor tilting noticeably now.

Her gaze flicked back to Tamar, her attention torn in three separate directions. He still seemed to be focused on Morrigance to the exclusion of everything else.

"My job?" She recognised the shock in his voice and could sense his struggle to retain even a semblance of composure. "I don't suppose it would help much if I asked you to stop?"

"Not much," Morrigance agreed quietly.

"I'm guessing from what I'm hearing that you're not in any position to answer at the moment," Jolee continued in her ear. "The mess I can feel in the Force down there right now . . . Phew girl, it's enough to make even an old man shudder."

_You're telling me_. Yuthura could sense Celyanda's eyes on her, the attention making her flesh creep. Everything about those two made her flesh creep. A large part of her simply wanted to turn and run. To get the hell out of there. Right then.

"Damn it." There was some muffled cursing she didn't catch, followed by a heavy sigh. "I did tell you this was a stupid plan, didn't I? I'm sure I must have."

_Oh you did. You did_. She bared her teeth. Celyanda's eyes tracked her position as she paced.

"Why?" Tamar's voice pierced right through Jolee's words, yanking her attention back to him.

"Why?" Morrigance's answering retort was harsh, edged in bitter acid. "Because someone has to, don't they, Revan? And it doesn't look like it's going to be you anymore, does it? You get to take the easy way out, reborn and redeemed without even your memories left to trouble you. The rest of us are left behind to see it through to the bitter end."

The quiet that fell then was deathly – no sound at all except for the wind noise outside.

"That's the real reason you hate me so much, isn't it?" Tamar said finally. There was something there that sounded like . . . realisation. Yuthura felt her various stomachs trying to tie themselves in knots. Her skin felt cold. "Not because of your face. Not what I did to you physically. But because I left all this to you."

Her laughter echoed hollowly.

"So what is it? Conquer the galaxy in the name of the Sith, simply because I was psychotic enough to try?" The deathly bleakness of his words made Yuthura shudder. "Keep walking the same path I did, even when you can see exactly where it leads to."

"Bantha crap." Yuthura jolted hard as Jolee's voice came over her earpiece. It took all her effort not to snap right back at him.

"I'm not quite sure whether this is funny or pathetic." Morrigance's retort was scathing.

"If you're still listening girl, and I'm guessing you must be, kick him up the arse for me." Suddenly Jolee sounded immensely old and tired. There was another sigh. "He can't do this now. He's got what he came for. As much as he's going to."

_Do what?_ She wanted to demand. Celyanda seemed to be staring right through her.

"Oh, I don't think it's the slightest bit funny." So, so soft.

"He's not trying to stop her here. He's trying to save her. Do what he failed to do with Malak." Lightning flashed, lighting up the murky cloud. It was followed almost immediately by a rumble of thunder that seemed to come from every direction at once and make the entire vast flying wing shake. "Sometimes though . . . sometimes the only thing left is to let go. Let go and have an end to it, no matter how painful it is."

"So deluded." Morrigance's words assumed a bizarre synchronicity with Jolee's. "If only you could know your old self. That, I think, is something that I'd love to see."

"Explain it to me then."

Yuthura wanted to yell at Tamar but couldn't. She could barely breathe.

"You don't remember what you once told me, do you? No, of course not. Stupid question."

Jolee was muttering something to himself that didn't fully carry across the comm. Yuthura's attention was fixed elsewhere anyway.

"You had been wrong, you said to me, about the Mandalorian war. The Jedi Council had been right about it all along, though for exactly the opposite reasons to those they thought." Morrigance spoke quietly, but her words still seemed to resound through the gondola somehow. Wind howled in eerie accompaniment. "The Mandalorians were supposed to win. To wipe the slate clean and finally restore balance to the Force. Put an end to the infinitely repeating cycle."

Yuthura heard his breath hiss.

"The Mandalorians were being manipulated and used by the Sith . . ."

"Exactly." She cut him off. "And that was what gave it all such perfect symmetry. When the Mandalorians had broken the Republic and crippled the Jedi, the Sith would strike and claim it all for themselves. Forge their great and glorious everlasting empire of darkness." Contempt dripped. "Tell me. Do you really think that the old Sith, as embodied by the likes of Darth Auza, had even a shadow of prayer against a freshly victorious Mandalorian war machine with the resources of a newly conquered Republic to back it up?"

No answer came. Lightning lit up the gondola again. More thunder rumbled, even louder than before.

"And so the Sith would be manipulated into engineering their own destruction, just as the Jedi were being influenced into sitting aside and placidly accepting their own annihilation. The will of the Force. You have to admire it in a way, rebalancing itself in a single stroke. Starting everything afresh."

"So I took it upon myself to correct my 'mistake'?"

At that moment, they emerged from the cloud cover, the surrounding darkness burning off in a ferocious blaze of red. It was awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time, everything below them in every direction an endless sea of flames. The air swirled with smoke and distorting heat haze, occasional islands and outcroppings of crystal reaching into the sky like twisted fire-blackened fingers clawing from beneath the charred earth.

Overhead, the clouds they'd just plunged through capped everything like a solid cavern roof, the churning funnels of nascent tornados reaching down like crooked stalactites. From this angle, lightning flickered continuously, competing with the flames for spectacle.

"We just took out the satellite tracking your position." Yuthura was staring at her surroundings so intently that Jolee's words barely registered. "Hopefully that'll blind the Genoharadan. If you can give us some kind of confirmation that you're ready to go to the next stage it would be _most_ appreciated."

"And since I failed, you've succeeded me, carrying on with what I started."

Yuthura's gaze flicked away from the gondola's windows back to Tamar and Morrigance, still locked together in a world that seemed to consist solely of each other. A battle of wills she only saw the surface of.

Several thousand metres directly overhead, skimming through the upper reaches of Eres III's atmosphere with Jolee stood on the command deck, the _Rancorous_ would be tracking their position exactly. On receipt of her confirmation, a jamming field would be projected down over them, cutting off any incoming or outgoing signals. Once that was done, the three-hundred plus assault droids they'd recently acquired would be dropped in from above.

Of course, when they'd concocted this hasty countermove to Hulas's change of plan, they'd not really anticipated that they'd be attacking a moving target, but the principals still applied.

"Oh, I've made some amendments," Morrigance said softly. The inferno reflected in her mask. "I'm not a warrior or general the way that you, or even Malak, were. But there are other methods of shaping something than simple brute force. Better methods, that don't leave you destroying what you're trying to shape."

"You're right about me being an idiot." Tamar's answering words were implacably grim. "Then and now. But ask yourself: what does that make you? Knowingly following in an idiot's footsteps."

This had gone on long enough, Yuthura decided.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward. Far below her feet, the waiting flames seemed eager to devour her if she made the slightest slip.

She laid a hand firmly on Tamar's shoulder, feeling hard muscles tense and coil beneath her touch. Then she spoke, loudly and clearly so the open comm. channel to Jolee couldn't fail to pick it up. "Come on, it's time to go."

He turned in what seemed like slow motion, blinking as if surfacing from a daze. For a moment, she feared what his response was going to be, but there was no protest. He simply nodded once. Both Celyanda and Morrigance were glaring at her directly now. It wasn't a pleasant sensation.

The comm. link had gone dead, no more than a blank hiss of static. Message received. They started rapidly towards the stairs.

"Wait!"

And of course, he stopped and looked back.

Yuthura had to restrain herself from grabbing his arm and trying to yank him after her bodily, like a recalcitrant toddler.

Morrigance's mask shone red-gold in the light from the flames. "You have spoken to Jedi Bastila. You know about the Living Fleet."

"I know."

_We don't have time for this_. But the words didn't make it past Yuthura's lips.

"Perhaps you're wondering why nothing has been heard of either it, or Darth Malefic?"

Tamar cast a brief look back over his shoulder at Yuthura. A sliver of a smile touched his lips fleetingly. She bared her teeth in response.

"Not particularly, no."

That seemed to leave Morrigance taken aback. Without any expression to go on, it was difficult to be certain. Behind her, the red backlight had transformed Celyanda into perfect gleaming devils.

"You should, Revan. Because right now I'm the only thing that's keeping them restrained. If I die here; if I'm captured; if anything else happens to me at all . . ." She spread her black gloved hands. "Then that restraint is gone. Given the state I left Malefic in when last we parted . . . I think that the Republic will come to regard even Malak as a gentle breeze by comparison."

"Come on." As she spoke, Yuthura sensed a fractional change in the subtle vibrations passing through the craft – almost a smoothening and lessening. It took her a second or so to pinpoint the cause, until it struck her that a couple of the vessel's propellers had just shut off.

"My safety and the Republic's safety right now are one, Revan. And it would seem we have both placed that safety in your hands."

"_Please_."

Tamar finally allowed himself to be pulled away. They started up the steps at a run.

At Morrigance's silent signal, Celyanda's lightsabers ignited, silver-white glare pushing back the angry red.

-s-s-

Ulvol Ellas stared at the figure in front of him and struggled to cling onto his sense of self.

She was a Twi'lek. It took him several seconds to work that out, partly due to the near complete dislocation he was feeling, and partly because of the fact that every visible portion of her had been burnt black.

_No_, a curiously detached inner voice amended, _not burnt_. _Burning_.

A corona of hot inch-high blue flame – the flame of burning low-grade shuttle fuel – continued to eat at her blackened skin. Angry pink eyes with milky white irises looked out at him from a ravaged nightmare of a face.

"You're dead, Jedi." It came out as a grating rasp, her lips cracking and weeping clear fluid. Horribly fascinated, he saw that the flames even burned inside her mouth. "In case you were wondering."

"I . . . I know. I . . . remember." _Jedi._ He looked down at himself – robes; golden fur – all of it unburned. "I think."

"I'm surprised. The shell of you has been wandering here for . . ." She faltered. "For however long it's been. He drained you thoroughly. Some of us thought you'd never recover any of yourself. There are those who don't when he takes too much."

"We?" The sense of dislocation suddenly became vertiginous.

"Oh yes. _We_. We're all one big happy family here." The burning Twi'lek's voice was scathing. The flames around her grew briefly bright and more intense, as though her anger fanned them. "You've already met at least one other of us. The boy. He was one of the earliest ones, I'm told. Perhaps the earliest of all. You should try to avoid the early ones. They're almost entirely part of the Catcher now, and anything they see he knows immediately."

_The Catcher_ . . .

Ellas struggled to make sense of her words, but his thoughts were leaden and slow. Suddenly an image played, leaping from the jumble. The Catcher, leaning over him as flames danced and played all around and everything seemed to dwindle. He could feel the Force . . . trying to flow in one direction, but being dragged in the opposite.

_The Force_. He blinked, startled, groping to form words. "I . . . he burnt me when I died. I . . . remember the flames." Memory was important to him. Memory had defined a large part of what he was, but now all of those memories where scattered and disordered. "Why aren't I burning now? Like . . . like . . ."

"Like me, you mean, Jedi? You were burned in life, while I was burned in death. There is a crucial difference."

Ellas couldn't make himself stop staring at her face. He felt something like shame. A Jedi should be something better than this. A Jedi shouldn't be so helpless and enfeebled. "What do you mean? Burned in death?"

"Carth tried to burn him, so the Catcher channelled the flame into here instead. Into me. I think it was a form of revenge."

"Revenge?" he echoed. "On you?"

"No!" Charred lekku writhed, dripping fire from their tips as if it was liquid. "On Carth."

His thoughts refused to work the way he knew they should. There was a sense of dislocation, as if they somehow belonged to a third person. He asked another question that he knew was stupid before he could catch himself. "You . . . knew Carth Onasi?"

"Funny how someone you meet for so short a time can have such an impact on your life. _And_ what comes afterwards . . ." She trailed off suddenly and let out groan of purest agony.

Ellas stared in horror. "You . . . you still feel the flames? The pain . . .?"

"Oh course I feel the pain!" It was almost a shriek. She bared teeth that had turned glossy black in the heat, fire shining between them. "You're not . . . You're not much of a Jedi, are you?"

"No. I . . . I suppose not." The shame burned more intensely and he struggled harder to get a hold of himself. "Perhaps . . . I can help you . . ."

"Keep your pity for yourself." The rage in those raw, boiled eyes grew to frightening intensity. "Believe me, you'll need it before long."

Ellas stood firm before her, reminding himself what he was – what he had been. He strove to find some kind of centre. "I'm . . . I was a doctor. A healer. There has to be some way I can help you. Some way to put out the flames and . . ."

"No!"

The sheer vehemence startled him, and he was forced to leap back rapidly as the flames flared high and bright around her, crackling hungrily. The blackened figure at their heart faded from view almost entirely amidst the dazzling brightness.

Suddenly the charred forest seemed to be closing in around him, the greyness a cloying, thickening shroud. Ellas felt everything sliding out from under him, and suddenly was struggling desperately just to hold onto the shreds of identity he'd managed to reassemble. Distantly he heard the flames crackling. Distantly he heard something that might have been shrieking.

It felt like he was going to be torn apart – the remnants of what he was scattered to the winds. Slowly the flame subsided and the world, or whatever it truly was, seemed to stabilise itself by degrees. He realised vaguely that he'd fallen to his knees at some point.

If it could be said that he even had knees anymore.

"No," she repeated more softly.

He stared up at her.

"The flames . . . the flames are _mine_!" Her voice distorted hideously then, raw with suffering. "The pain . . ." She laughed, the sound containing very little in the way of sanity. "The Catcher doesn't like the pain." The laughter broke down and became another raw scream. "It means _he_ stays away from me for the most part, and that _is_ a price worth paying. Any price for _that_."

He was too numb to respond. _Ulvol Ellas_. His name. It made him jolt. Somehow, it had almost gotten away from him again, memories leaking like arterial blood.

"Besides, look around you, _Jedi_. This is hell right here, and I don't want to forget that. I don't want to grow to accept it. Not the way some of us here have. Burning like this helps to remind me what I am and where I am."

"But . . ."

"No buts." Her face twisted, her cheek cracking and something oozing forth like a thick, sticky tear.

Finally, Ellas nodded – forced himself upright. _Ulvol Ellas. Caamasi and failed Jedi, fallen now in more respects than one._

_Ulvol Ellas. Dead_.

He looked around – this strange grey place, scorched by fire. _Ulvol Ellas. Damned_.

But no. That was something he wasn't willing to concede. He found his voice and it was slightly stronger and more certain than before. "What's your name?"

"My name? My name _was_ Bliss." A ghastly pain-wracked attempt at a smile followed. "Oh the ironies."

"Let me help you, Bliss. Please." This time the voice was calm. _His_ voice.

She looked at him in silence with her gruesome, tormented eyes, then sadly shook her head. "I had allowed myself to hope that a Jedi might be different. A foolish hope. I see now you're just the same as all of us here. Just as helpless. Just as lost."

Abruptly she turned her back on him and started to walk away, the greyness closing in rapidly.

"Wait!" he called, but she didn't stop, or look back.

He trailed after her.

-s-s-

"I'll meet you there then." The voice sounded very much like Carth Onasi. There was a note of urgency to it – desperate impatience barely concealed beneath a layer of civility. "Thank you for your time, Padawan May. I appreciate the trouble you're going to."

Somewhere deep in the near infinite maze of passages and rat runs that formed Coruscant's undercity, a primitive communications terminal – so primitive that it even lacked a holo-feed – shut off. Teeth gleaming brilliant white in the flickering artificial light, the Catcher stepped back from it, reaching up and peeling off the dermal microphone he wore over his throat.

"Thank you for your time, Padawan May," he repeated, his grin spreading to take in his entire face. This time, the voice was very much his own.

-s-s-

Tamar swore under his breath, then shook his head, struggling to concentrate and block out the vision that had been playing inside his head since he'd left Morrigance in the viewing gallery. Little bits and pieces kept on leaking through though, beyond his ability to contain.

"It won't budge." He let his hold on the Force subside.

Yuthura didn't say anything, her lightsaber snapping on as she stepped past him. In front of them, blocking the way back to where their flyer was docked, an emergency barrier had descended from the ceiling. It was stubbornly resisting any attempts to bypass it.

"No. Celyanda's going to be on top of us before we're halfway done." He could feel them closing fast.

"Then what?"

He gestured back the way they'd just come, towards a service ladder that led up from the gondola into the superstructure of the wing. "Maybe we can get around it that way."

"Outside?" Yuthura sounded decidedly sceptical.

He didn't blame her, but the list of viable alternatives was contracting fast. "We can always stand and fight."

"Outside," she agreed.

He led the way, wrenching open a maintenance hatch and ascending rapidly, the ladder vibrating in time to their movements. Celyanda's presence, getting closer at an alarming rate, was like a homing singularity, distorting everything around it as it approached.

Another hatch blocked the way above them.

This one was locked, red warning lights shining in the gloom. The wind noise and hull vibrations were markedly stronger now. A quick attempt to override the lock produced an angry beep of denial. Ripping open an access panel revealed a mess of wires and circuitry beneath. He struggled to stay calm and keep his breathing under control as he studied it.

"Do you feel that?"

Tamar glanced down at Yuthura. "What?"

"Another pair of engines have just switched off," she stated evenly.

His gaze snapped back to the wires. He'd counted ten separate vast propellers along the length of the wing on the way. Briefly, he wondered how many of them were required as a minimum to keep them airborne. "Is the jamming field still up?"

"Yes." The outward calm in Yuthura's voice held a brittle edge. "I'm starting to wonder where our help has got to."

He grunted, giving up trying to work out what anything in front of him actually did and trying to let the Force guide him. "Everything's probably running to a pre-programmed sequence. Look on the bright side. We're still alive to have this conversation."

"For now."

It felt like Celyanda was right on top of them – or rather, right beneath them – a storm to match anything outside. Gritting his teeth, Tamar pulled two wires free and pressed their ends together. The red warning lights above him died. Unfortunately the hatch remained as firmly locked as ever. He swore.

"I hate to be a nag or anything, but could you speed things up a little, Tamar?"

He positioned his lightsaber to cut through the hatch lock, pulling the Force close around him in a protective sphere. Briefly though, he hesitated, glancing down at Yuthura again. "You need to shield yourself against the airflow. Similar to the kind of shield you'd use against Force lightning. You see?"

"I've got it."

Gritting his teeth, he ignited his lightsaber in a dazzling blaze of cyan. A fraction later there was a sharp cracking noise accompanied by a shower of sparks. With a shrieking wail of tortured metal, the hatch ripped free.

In that first instant, Tamar was almost yanked free as it felt like he was seized by a gigantic fist. Agonising pain flared through his shoulders, as it seemed for several seconds that his arms were going to be ripped from their sockets in the effort of holding on. The roaring of the wind was like an entire chorus of banshees screaming directly in his ears.

After that first instant, he managed to create a calmer bubble of air around him, and the immediacy of the danger passed. His breath was coming hard and fast and intermittent tremors passed through his arms. Sweat trickled down his face and made his eyes sting. The wind was hot.

Gritting his teeth with the effort of maintaining the air bubble, he pulled himself up, into Eres III's open sky.

-s-s-

Thalia May strode rapidly down the steps leading from the entrance of the Jedi Temple, trying not to seem conspicuous – trying to keep her thoughts placid and ordered. She recited the Jedi Code inside her head, not for any fractional comfort or focus that it might give – since it gave precious little of that – but because it hopefully hid her real purpose from showing too prominently in her thoughts.

The robes she wore felt oddly uncomfortable around her.

That was at least nine parts psychological, she knew. They were Jedi Knight robes, and for all she had progressed well as a Padawan, to the point where she'd even heard vague talk of possible knighthood trials for her some time in the future, they did not belong to her. She didn't know the name of the Jedi she'd stolen them from – the act had felt fractionally more comfortable done that way.

The theft had proved necessary – or at least, expedient – due to the fact that, since the murder of Master Quatra, all apprentices and Padawans had been confined strictly to temple grounds.

And right now, she judged, what she was doing was more important than strict obedience.

Not that this judgment made the decision any easier. When she was found out – as she accepted that she inevitably would be – it wouldn't just be herself who felt the consequences.

All of those who had once been with the Sith knew well enough that their individual transgressions inevitably reflected back upon their entire number. And all of them knew equally that, for all the Jedi Masters claimed that they were fully welcome no matter what they may have done in the past, among the rank and file of their fellows, it was a very different story. They were – and perhaps always would be – an underclass, viewed with thinly veiled distaste and suspicion.

The fact that there was currently such general antipathy towards the Jedi Order in the Republic as a whole simply worked to amplify the situation tenfold. The blame was always unspoken, but it was equally always there.

And perhaps, when it came down to it, it was deserved. She struggled, at least on her own behalf, to fully argue otherwise.

She stopped suddenly in her tracks, staring, thoughts forgotten. It took her conscious brain a moment to catch up with her eyes and subconscious.

The object that had grabbed her attention so forcefully was a man with a shaved head walking up the steps towards her. There was a woman walking alongside him, but Thalia barely paid her a thought.

He was handsome enough, she supposed, in a rugged kind of way, but not really to a degree that justified the intensity of her reaction. He certainly didn't look exactly like he appeared on the recruiting posters. Despite the shaved head though, he was close enough a match that she was absolutely sure she wasn't mistaken.

Their earlier conversation came back.

_I'm looking for my son. Dustil Onasi. I understand you're . . . well I don't know if friends is the right word, but at least that you know him quite well. I'm standing in Dustil's apartment right now. There's . . . there's been an incident. Could we arrange to meet, Padawan May? I'm . . . well to be honest I'm _extremely_ worried. I'm sorry, but for reasons I'd rather not go into over an open line, I can't come to the Jedi Temple._

_Right._ _Captain Hero Lying Bastard Onasi_. Walking up the steps to the Jedi Temple he couldn't come to at precisely the same time he'd arranged to meet her somewhere else.

Gritting her teeth and trying – not altogether successfully – to keep her irritation in check, she walked across to intercept him.

She never noticed for a moment that she was being watched.

-s-s-

Hot wind howled cacophonously, everything lit by ruddy, hellish glare. Thunder grumbled continuously overhead, a constant counterpoint.

Sweat glistening on his face, Tamar inched forward. The turbulent flow of air formed a visible slipstream around the stable pocket he was struggling to maintain around himself to avoid being snatched away into the stormy Eres sky. Substantially more surefooted than he was, Yuthura had overtaken him and moved ahead by several metres, though even she was hardly moving quickly. The second hatch they were making for still looked an imposingly long trek ahead of them.

Suddenly he realised that Yuthura had stopped. She was gesturing frantically for him to look around, mouthing something that the screaming wind devoured whole. Her lekku whipped out sideways from her head like streamers.

As he turned, his jaw dropped, and every conscious thought was swept away in mix of awe and sheer terror.

They were heading directly towards one of the vast tornado funnels reaching down from the jet-black cloud above. It looked to be at least a hundred metres in diameter and gave the weird optical illusion of spinning in both directions at once. Burning ash had been swept up from the raging fires below, so that the churning maelstrom seemed to be shot through with threads of incandescent white-orange flame – the devouring maw of a wrathful god.

It was closing in at an alarming rate.

"Sh . . .!" His voice was lost and swept away.

The impact point would be somewhere in the region of five hundred metres away from their current position, just beyond the midpoint of the wing. It didn't seem possible that the hotel had even the remotest chance of surviving such an encounter.

Heart thudding with surging adrenaline, attempting to increase his speed, Tamar overbalanced and slipped. As a startled cry was sucked from his lungs, he bounced head over heels down the smoothly curving metal surface of the wing.

Each bone-jarring impact blasted the air from his lungs and made his vision swirl and distort crazily. In sheer last-ditch desperation, he stabbed down with his lightsaber, deep into the wing's surface, clinging onto the hilt for dear life . . .

And finally came to a thudding halt at the end of a ten-metre gash in the wing's surface, his legs still kicking out behind him in the air. Where the lightsaber pierced the wing's skin, droplets of molten metal sparked and spat.

Finally, as it began to feel as if his heart was going to burst inside his chest, he managed to suck some air back into lungs. A few seconds later, he managed to haul his legs under him again and stabilise his position slightly, wrapping himself once more in a bubble of relatively calmer air. For a time though, it was all he could do to cling on limpet-like as his muscles trembled and shook.

As he looked back he saw that he'd tumbled close on a hundred metres beyond Yuthura's position, straight past the hatch they were aiming for, so that he was now even further from it than he'd been before. He saw that she was looking directly at him and he managed to give her a slightly shaky thumbs up gesture.

She returned it, resuming her steady forward progress. Grimacing to himself, he pulled his lightsaber free of the wing and copied her.

And then, as if to prove the situation could get worse, Celyanda arrived.

The female half shot out of the same hatch he and Yuthura had exited just under a minute earlier, flying gracefully through the air and landing with the ease and grace of a cat. The wind made her hair writhe around her head as if it was formed out of living golden serpents. Otherwise, she might as well have been taking a quiet stroll in the park for all the effect it seemed to have on her.

Less than a second later, her male twin landed just as easily at her side. Their lightsabers shone like lightning bolts. Behind them, the fire-shot tornado loomed larger and larger.

Yuthura whirled immediately to face the new threat, her own lightsaber glowing violet as the wind streamed past her, directly into his face. He stared in rising horror. There wasn't the slightest chance that he could reach her side before Celyanda closed the distance. Any attempt at Force jumping would simply see him swept away.

And the chances of her being able to take on both of them together . . .

Before he could finish the thought, something swooped down out of the lightning-shot clouds directly above them. Belatedly he recognised it as one of the _Rancorous's_ dropships.

The wind tossed it around as if it was a child's toy, but somehow, either through tremendous skill or equally tremendous luck, its Echani pilot managed to guide it until it was directly above their position and hold it relatively steady. The back of it opened, and a number of gleaming shapes started plummeting down towards them, metal seeds blown from a giant flower.

The first two assault droids were caught in the wind's teeth and missed the wing entirely, tumbling past and away towards the blazing xoxin plains below. A third simply hit the edge of the wing and bounced straight off with a squalling wail, likewise to its doom. But the next few all hit true, landing between Yuthura and Celyanda, huge metal claws ripping into the metal surface and clamping them tightly in place.

Immediately they began to lay down a steady barrage of blaster fire in Celyanda's direction.

Gulping in relief, Tamar watched as Yuthura took advantage of the distraction and started to resume her way towards the hatch. He followed suit, moving as quickly as he dared as the wind battered at him. In the background, the tornado loomed larger than ever – a devouring infernal titan.

About a dozen more droids managed to land on the wings while just as many missed. Celyanda's lightsabers blurred as the twins seemed to dance through the blaster fire. One assault droid was cut down in a blazing shower of sparks while another pair were knocked lose by a violent wave of Force. A fourth was sliced cleanly in half, then a fifth . . .

Between Celyanda's twin capering figures, Morrigance had now risen into view, black robes streaming out behind her like raven's wings. The vision in Tamar's head rose up again, but he rapidly throttled it back hard.

Overhead, the dropship now swerved downwards, manoeuvring closer and closer to their position, a ladder trailing down from its rear. The angry whine of its repulsors mixed with the howling of the wind. Further away, a second and a third dropship had descended through the cloud cover, and were in the process of dropping off their own payloads of battle droids further down the wing.

And all the while, the tornado's destructive embrace grew closer . . .

The entire situation seemed utterly, utterly insane.

Yuthura was within an arms length of the ladder trailing from the first dropship when near-disaster struck. Having dealt with the first wave of droids, Celyanda lashed out via the Force, an ion storm crackling into life around the dropship's bulk.

The dropship's repulsors sputtered, then cut out entirely. It lost control.

As it swerved wildly, the ladder trailing from it hit Yuthura a glancing blow and sent her sprawling. Tamar's throat contracted tight as she bounced and slid past him down the wing, seemingly completely limp. Frantically he reached out with the Force to try to catch her. Overhead, the dropship flipped over completely in mid air and veered away.

Groaning with effort, he managed to bring Yuthura's tumbling slide came to a halt scarily close to the wing's edge and oblivion. He could feel shaking as he struggled to hold onto her. With his concentration divided in two, he could feel the pocket of stable air around him wavering, on the verge of collapse. A violent gust of wind plucked at him, and in desperation, he dropped flat, jamming his lightsaber into the wing again to anchor him tight.

Somewhere behind him came a horrendous crash and the metal beneath him juddered violently.

The dropship had slammed, upside down, onto the top of the wing, pulverising a trio of unfortunate assault droids that happened to be in the way. Spraying sheets of incandescent sparks and ploughing a deep gash in the wing's superstructure, it slid for about fifty metres before its repulsors kicked in again, causing it to bounce and flip.

Straight into the path of the second dropship.

Tamar flinched. Near-miraculously, the second dropship somehow managed to swerve out of the way.

In doing so though, it strayed far too close to the tornado and was caught up and swept inside, where it was ripped apart in seconds. The first dropship, its cockpit along with the entire front section completely flattened, fire spurting from the fractures in its hull, exploded concussively.

The third dropship, also straying much too close to the tornado for comfort, had to peel off abruptly vanishing from view.

Tamar yanked his gaze away, grimacing.

Yuthura was moving now, albeit feebly, her limbs twitching uncoordinatedly. There looked to be a deep gash in her scalp, leaking blood in copious quantities. Concentrating grimly, Tamar set about the business of hauling her in towards him, his free hand outstretched towards her as he clung onto the hilt of his lightsaber with the other. Hot wind buffeted constantly as if it had taken on a malevolent consciousness and was deliberately trying to pluck him free. A deafening peel of thunder set his ears ringing.

Finally, their hands touched, locking together spasmodically. He channelled Force into her as well as he could, and her eyes seemed to clear slightly, locking with his. The sense of relief was dizzying.

"I'm okay," she mouthed, the sound swept away as soon as the words passed her lips. "I'm okay."

He felt her touch the Force, using it to re-establish a bubble of still air around herself, and nodded shakily.

Then he threw a hasty glance back over his shoulder. Unnoticed during his efforts to pull Yuthura in, he saw that he'd been dragged another ten metres further down the wing, his lightsaber leaving another crooked molten gouge.

And in that time, Morrigance had reached the hatch they'd originally been aiming for. Behind her, Celyanda was still busy annihilating droids, covering her progress.

As Tamar watched, Morrigance's lightsaber ignited smoothly and carved straight through the hatch as easily as if it were butter. It was as if she felt his eyes on her, and she paused briefly, looking up. Her mask reflected orange.

_Come, Celyand_a. _Time to go_.

He heard the thought with crystal clarity. Then, inclining her head in brief acknowledgement of him, she dropped through the hatch, out of sight.

She was, he realised numbly, going to try to take their flyer – leave them trapped.

_If she could get past the locked controls . . ._

Which, of course, she could. He snorted, letting that faint hope die. Groaning with the effort, hot wind lashing all around him more fiercely than ever, he pulled himself upright again – started after her.

Immediately though, Celyanda broke off from their combat with the remaining droids, moving through the wind and turbulence with a speed and ease that was astonishing. His heart thudded, lightsaber raising defensively . . .. But they didn't pay either him or Yuthura even the slightest fragment of attention, vanishing inside the hatch.

He pressed forward regardless. The controls would take at least a few moments. If they moved quickly enough, they could still . . .

Yuthura's hand closed on his shoulder. He looked up.

The tornado hit.

The impact made the entire wing lurch and shudder violently, knocking them both to their knees. To start with at least, the hotel held together. The noise was horrendous, thousands of metal plates covering the wing's surface buckling and tearing free, spinning through the air like chaff. The entire superstructure seemed to be groaning aloud in agony, and Tamar could feel it shifting and distorting beneath him.

One droid after another was sucked up into the air, spinning away into the clouds. A giant propeller screamed, then shattered in a spray of gigantic shrapnel. The entire vessel started to spin around slowly, orbiting the twisting maw of destruction at its centre.

He grabbed hold of Yuthura tightly, extending a protective shield around them as metal fragments flew through the air nearby with enough force to slice a person completely in two. He felt the Force flowing from her to him in turn, augmenting his strength and reinforcing the protective barrier.

It was entirely futile. All it did was buy them a few more seconds before the burning tornado plucked them away and devoured them.

But a few more seconds was a few more seconds . . .

He looked into her eyes, her face dark and sticky with blood.

She smiled; gripped him tightly. He smiled back. The heat was scorching against his face. Beneath them, the wing began to tilt upwards alarmingly . . .

_It looks like you two could use some help._

He jolted hard, and it took him a moment to recognise the source of the words inside his head.

Bastila. Speaking across the bond.

His gaze lifted, Yuthura's eyes following his. Another ship was swooping, hawk-like from the cover of the black clouds, seemingly riding the very edge of the tornado like a suicidal surfer as it flew towards their position.

It disappeared from view under the wing directly beneath them . . .

_Now jump._

-s-s-

Tamar watched through the window as the huge flying wing finally surrendered to the inevitable and broke into fragments. At this distance, unlike up close, it all happened in serene and almost stately silence. His eyes followed one of the gondolas as it tumbled free, plummeting end over end, all the way to the flames far, far below.

It was a strange feeling. More a lack of feeling, perhaps. Having surrendered to the inevitability of death, only to be reprieved at the last, when no prospect of reprieve remained.

There was no elation. Nothing he could identify except weariness as the flow of adrenaline subsided

He closed his eyes. And he finally surrendered, letting the vision that had been lurking in his subconscious at last come entirely to the fore.

_He watched the scene through Revan's eyes – his own eyes – yet at the same time it was as if he saw everything as a neutral observer. There was no access to the secret interiors of his own head. No way to truly know himself._

_It was, he realised, how all his visions of the past went._

_The visions he'd had from Bastila, of facing her on the bridge of his flagship. The visions he'd had from Malak. And now, the visions from Morrigance. His mind gravitated to what it instinctively knew was familiar – the dark and dreadful monster in the mask – but he never truly saw inside the monster, because it never was _his_ memories he was in._

_The monster was looking down into another mask that was polished to a mirror sheen. In that mask, he saw his own mask, reflected and reflecting. Masks within masks within masks. An infinity of them, layered inside each other._

_The mask was descending slowly and steadily towards the figure secured to the gurney beneath it – the still raw, skull-like ruin that had at one time been a face. The eyes that were the most human looking part of that ruin remaining flicked back forth. Breath sawed rhythmically through perma-grinning teeth, redolent of pain. Finally, with a soft click, the mask locked into place._

_"You will need to wear this from now onwards, and not for reasons of aesthetic nicety." The monster's voice echoed, hollow and alien. It didn't really sound human at all. "Without lips, without a protective dermal layer, or the mucus membranes in your nose, you will always now be prone to infection."_

_There was no response, save for the amplified sound of her breathing._

_"I didn't want to do this, Morrigance." He watched clinically as his hand reached down and touched the sheet beside her shoulder. "It didn't give me any pleasure."_

_"Norb ee." _Nor me_. He saw his own gloved fingers spasm. The voice sounded like that of a ventriloquist in dire need of practise. It was barely recognisable._

_He chuckled. It sounded forced, and trailed off into a sighing breath. "I would have let you go, you know. In the end, I would have let you go."_

_The only sound from the figure on the gurney was a hissing rasp._

_"But not the easy way for you, eh Morrigance? Needlessly overcomplicating simple things has always been your biggest flaw." He shook his head, and an element of harshness crept in. "Why try to deceive me? Why try to play both ends?"_

_"Hab by cake ad eatit." _Have my cake and eat it_. Briefly, there was a strangling noise. Her chest shuddered and heaved beneath the sheet._

_"Your timing was especially bad. On another occasion I might have been able to let it pass." He started to walk, padding in circles around her supine form like a pacing vornskyr. Her masked face tilted, as though to follow him, but she gave up the attempt quickly, seemingly too weak. "Not now though. Not so close after Malak, with the scrutiny I am under, all the vultures circling – searching for the slightest hint of weakness." _

_A pause. A snap. "I will not allow everything to be undone. You must have known that." He stopped pacing. "I suffer a loss of face, so therefore you must too. That is the way of things."_

_"Wabt ow?" A wrenching groan. "Why obt kill be?"_

_"In this, killing achieves nothing useful. As for what now?" He seemed to be weighing up his answer carefully. "Now, I think, we are right back to the point where we started. Full circle, if you like. You still have a choice to make, Morrigance." _

_"A choibce." The grating sound might have been an attempt at laughter._

_"This time I expect you to actually make it." He turned away abruptly, and started walking towards the med bay doors. "I'll give you one week to put everything in order."_

_The agonised sound of her breathing followed him._


	20. Gunboat Diplomacy

**20. Gunboat Diplomacy**

_"You really want to know what I'm doing, Revan? Why I killed the Council?" _There was venom in the voice of the masked and hooded figure. An acid corrosive enough to etch hardened durasteel_. "I'm doing what you should be doing. I'm doing your job."_

The hologram flickered and crackled, blurring out with atmospheric interference. Grimacing, Tamar reached across and turned it off. "Anyone can fake a hologram, you know that Jolee? And this one doesn't even look like a particularly convincing fake."

"Ah, but kid, you have the word of a Council appointed Jedi Master to back you up."

Tamar turned around slowly. His expression contained the strong suggestion that he didn't find that _quite_ as reassuring as he was probably supposed to. The _Rancorous_ still sat in orbit of Eres III, at the moment in the shadow of the planet's night side. The fires of the xoxin plains, visible through the viewing wall directly behind him, seemed even more savagely intense against the contrast of the surrounding blackness.

"Hey, don't look at me like that, sonny. It's not my fault you've gone and gotten your head stuck up your ass here."

Across the room, Yuthura appeared to be struggling with a cough all of a sudden.

_Yeah, thanks._ Tamar shot a sour look her way, before returning his attention to Jolee. "Could you please quit it with the 'kids', the 'boys', the 'sonnies', and for that matter, any other diminutives you might come up with in the meantime?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." Jolee's look of wide-eyed surprise was so comical that Tamar almost smiled. Almost. "Am I annoying you at all?"

He forced himself to relax the tension tightening his shoulders and breathe normally. "Not in the slightest."

_Yeah, I get the message, old man. Lighten up. Accept the situation for what it is. There is peace and all that._ Both Mission and Canderous – surprisingly – had shared similar sentiments, in their own inimitable and very different ways.

"Really? Damn. I guess I'll just have to try harder."

"Don't extend yourself on my account, _old_ man." Tamar deliberately spoke over-loudly, as if to someone who was partially deaf. "Shouldn't you be taking a nap or something about now, anyway? You don't want to overdo it at your age. It'll give you gas, and you know how unpleasant that is for _everyone_."

There was a clearly audible snorting sound.

Both he and Jolee turned and looked at Bastila. She stood watching them with her arms folded across her chest. "Do you think the two of you could at least try to be serious for a moment here?" The expression on her face suggested she didn't see the funny side.

Jolee glanced across at Tamar and raised an eyebrow. "Well, sonny?"

The all too fleeting sense of levity was rapidly crushed. Clawing tension reasserted itself. Morrigance reasserted herself, to be more precise about it. He nodded heavily, then switched the holo-recording back on, fast forwarding through it to a particular point. Back to work.

_"But there are other methods of shaping something than simple brute force. Better methods, that don't leave you destroying what you're trying to shape."_

Expression fixed, he rewound it and played it again – as if he was attempting to unpick a particularly devilish puzzle.

"Why kill the Council?" He glanced across at Jolee again as he spoke. "Better methods that don't leave you destroying what you're trying to shape."

"That look says you're thinking." Jolee commented idly. "Always makes me nervous, that," There was a gleam to his eyes that seemed totally out of step with the casual tone of his words.

Tamar grunted. "Makes a change from you going on about me _not_ thinking, I suppose." A tired headshake. "Why kill the Council" It was muttered this time, barely audible, and he answered the question almost without pause. "So that you can build something new in its place. Something that's more to your liking. Something you can shape the way you want it to be shaped. _Better methods than destroying_." His fingers drummed on the console. "Does that make sense to you, Jolee? Because I keep coming back round to it over and over again."

"What are you suggesting exactly?" Bastila had now moved to stand at his shoulder and was staring at the frozen holo-recording. That first moment of close proximity between them was oddly disorienting as, across their shared bond, it briefly felt like he was standing in two places at one once, fractionally out of synch with himself.

Their eyes met as he glanced back at her. It was oddly uncomfortable how even the tiniest of gestures contained faint echoes of past intimacies.

"That she's controlling the new Jedi Council?" she went on. Her voice was cool and clipped, strangely distant, as if she felt nothing at all.

And there it was, baldly stated. What his thoughts had been skirting round and he'd been waiting for someone else to say.

"That is _utterly_ ridiculous," Bastila answered herself before he'd even opened his mouth to reply. He could hear the tiny fracture of uncertainty underlying her words though.

"I . . . Maybe not controlling." He intensely hoped. "Not directly. Influencing perhaps. Perhaps not even that. Just prodding in a particular direction, towards or away from where she wants them to look." His thoughts were skipping along ahead of themselves, playing join the dots. The dots formed a decidedly unpleasant looking pattern. "What greater power is there than to turn an enemy to your cause?"

Which, of course, was an absolutely idiotic thing to say. He knew that even before Bastila's looked hastily away from him. He could feel her actively blocking out the bond.

_Frak_.

"Everything keeps on pointing back to the centre, doesn't it? Back to Coruscant." Yuthura's intervention came as a relief. Her eyes met his and held them. He wished he could . . . he wished there was some time. "Everything in Auza's data files. Everything we piece together." She bared her teeth. "Back to where we started."

_Back to where there's no possible escape for us_.

He tried to smile reassuringly, but he couldn't even reassure himself. _Escape was never an option anyway_. His eyes closed briefly. When had he even started to think in terms of being allowed to have an after?

"Seems that way," Jolee agreed. He managed to sound almost cheerful.

Tamar rewound the holo-recording a short distance and let it play again.

_"And so the Sith would be manipulated into engineering their own destruction, just as the Jedi were being influenced into sitting aside and placidly accepting their own annihilation. The will of the Force. You have to admire it in a way, rebalancing itself in a single stroke. Starting everything afresh."_

"The will of the Force." Jolee broke the cloying silence that had settled in. "Five words I've come to loathe more than any others in my time." He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Although when I come to think of it, 'Jolee, what do I do now?' runs them pretty damn close."

"That's six words," Tamar said absently.

"Wow, and I didn't even see you using your fingers to count there, kid. Impressive."

"Damn straight, I'm impressive." Tamar's expression remained fixed, going through the motions. He just didn't have it in him right now.

"Service to the will of the Force is the entire foundation of what the Jedi Order is." Bastila sounded vaguely defensive as she said it – stung into a comment she knew she was going to regret, but at the same time unable to stop herself.

Jolee shook his head, suddenly looking profoundly old and weary. "I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with letting the Force inform and guide your actions. Quite the opposite. But you can't use that as an excuse to renege on your own responsibilities and withdraw from the real world. You can't use it as an easy way out." He sighed. "And yes, I am a fine one to talk about that, but I've had this conversation with Vrook Lamar on at least a dozen occasions, and it was tedious enough the first time out. There's nothing worse than two old men arguing. Well known fact."

Two old men who didn't have the chance to argue anymore. Tamar could hear the underlying melancholy in the words. "And could she actually be right?"

Jolee's head swivelled, his face drawn in a grimace. "What if she is? You going to lay down and let her win?"

Tamar simply raised an eyebrow at the sudden heat in the old man's voice.

"Can't know the will of the Force kid. It's arrogance beyond folly to think you even remotely can, and I guess the Jedi are guiltier of that than most." Another headshake. "No, I'm pretty sure that the 'will of the Force' doesn't need anyone telling it what it is or isn't, and can take care of itself well enough. The universe has lasted this long without us minding its business for it, so I expect it can manage well enough now." He looked from face to face, as if challenging each of them in turn to disagree with him. "We should look to our own concerns first. What we can influence."

"That last bit sounds very nearly Sith-like," Yuthura commented quietly after the silence had dragged on for a second or so.

"Talk enough vaguely profound sounding bantha-crap and by the law of averages, you'll eventually hit upon a few truths. I should know. I've been living pretty well off that for years." They held each other's gaze, and Tamar had the impression of something unspoken passing between them. "But I think you know well enough what I mean."

Lekku rearranged themselves on her shoulders and she nodded.

Tamar was strongly aware of Bastila's gaze on him again – that she was going to say something. He turned and looked at her.

Her lips pursed. Awareness of his awareness. "You said that afterwards you were going to come back with me to Coruscant. To face the Council."

_And is this not afterwards? Has that changed?_ He could hear the unspoken questions. _Is this going to be another excuse not to face up to the inevitable? Another excuse to charge off somewhere else?_

Before he could say anything, Jolee had clapped his hands together loudly enough to make them both jolt. "Well that does indeed sound like an excellent idea." There was a gleam to his eye, the weariness seeming to have slid away. "So that's all settled then."

At that moment, before anyone else could say anything, the door behind them opened.

It was Canderous. His expression looked grim, but that was, Tamar conceded, a bit like saying water was wet. Best not to read too much into it.

Not bothering to waste time with any preamble or pleasantries, Canderous strode across to join them. He seemed completely unphased by the fact that they'd all stopped talking and were now staring at him.

After a moment, he nodded towards the holographic image of Morrigance, frozen mid-speech. "So this is the woman who's kicked your arse at least twice now, is it?

"That's her," Tamar confirmed, somehow faintly amused.

Their eyes met. Canderous snorted in a manner that suggested he wasn't remotely impressed. "Can I make a suggestion here?"

"I'm surprised you feel the need to ask."

Canderous chuckled, low and rumbling. "Stop fraking about like this bunch of Echani fairies you've taken to associating with, Revan. You're picking up bad habits. Next time you run into her, just fraking kill her."

_Just fraking kill her_. Jolee's scolding words of earlier came to mind: _you can't save everyone_. _Stop and take a look at the bigger picture for a moment here._

_Like I'm doing this deliberately here_. He gritted his teeth and suppressed the first retort that came to mind. "I'll take that under advisement."

"Is there something you actually wanted, Canderous?" Bastila interrupted. Her tone was icily brittle. It surprised Tamar how personally annoyed she sounded.

"Oh, excuse me, Princess. Am I interrupting private Jedi business here?" There was obviously more, unspoken, passing between them that Tamar couldn't remotely interpret. He wondered, briefly, just how many loops he was out of here.

"But yeah. Now you mention it. I did stop by for a chat" There was a suggestion of smirk. "Our sensors have picked up a bit of an altercation through the Eres satellite network. It's the other side of the planet to us at the moment, but the local planetary defence force has just scrambled the nearest it can manage to an interstellar fleet."

"And?" There was an and coming, of course.

"And a Republic taskforce – half a dozen capital ships strong – has just dropped out of hyperspace. Currently there seems to be a bit of a standoff with the locals. How long it'll last is anybody's guess." There was a kind of grim glee audible in the Mandalorian's words.

Tamar wanted, suddenly, to swear. No prizes for guessing why the Republic was here.

"Looks to me like someone went and tipped them off."

-s-s-

Yolanda watched Carth's back until she judged that he was out of earshot. Neither him, nor the young Jedi walking alongside him – talking with earnest solemnity now that she had recovered from her initial bout of pique – appeared to notice her dropping behind. Then she stepped behind one of the tall white columns supporting the high arched ceiling of the Jedi Temple's grand entrance colonnade.

Light and uncluttered serenity. Silence and empty space. It reminded her in many respects of the entrance chamber to a mausoleum.

Apposite enough in the current circumstances, she though with a wry twist of her lips. Over the past five years, at least three times as many Jedi had died as were still left alive.

Her hand came up to her ear, activating the commlink she wore. She attempted to shove all the distractions running through her head aside and focus purely on the matter in hand.

Split and focus. Compartmentalisation. Something that, up until now, she'd always considered herself to be an expert at. Now she was realising belatedly that you were only truly good at it until the moment you found the situation you couldn't separate yourself from. Just like you were only ever brave until you finally found the thing that made a coward of you.

Rapidly and dispassionately, she recited an address. It was the same address where Jedi May had said she had arranged to meet with 'Carth'.

The address was parroted back, verbatim.

"Confirmed." It was all a bit like a banking transaction. On the surface, anyway. "Your mark is a Dark Jedi." She ran through a rapid and clinically precise description of the Catcher. "Do not approach. Do not engage under any circumstances. Lock on and track until further word is received."

"Understood."

"Out."

As simple as that. She almost laughed, but caught herself.

After all, it wasn't really done to laugh in tombs.

-s-s-

"This place." Carth was looking up at the vaulted ceiling, late afternoon Coruscanti sunlight shining down on him in dazzlingly brilliant shafts. "I don't suppose it ever gives you the creeps does it?"

Thalia May's startlingly pale and intense looking eyes blinked. She was obviously confused by the abrupt change in conversational tack.

After a moment, she said: "I spent years in the Sith academy on Korriban, surrounded by people who would gladly have killed me simply for the prestige it gained them. I helped excavate the tombs of ages old Sith Lords who aren't entirely dead yet. For over a week I was hiding out in caves with Shyracks, Tukata and Terantateks, hunted by Sith and trying not to think about which one of the several dozen equally horrible ways I might die. So to answer your question. No, not really."

Carth grunted, feeling rather embarrassed. But a part of him, however irrational, still wasn't sure he wouldn't have taken even Korriban for preference. There, at least, there would have been a concrete reason for feeling the way he did now. He shook his head. "Never mind."

Thalia was frowning though, looking back over his shoulder. He wondered if, for all her words, he'd struck a nerve.

"Where's your . . ." There was the tiniest hesitation. "Friend?"

"What?" It took him a moment to realise what Thalia was getting at. Somehow, somewhere in the twenty or so metres between where they stood now and the temple doors, they'd lost Yolanda.

Something inside him clenched. He swore under his breath – a particular _interesting_ phrase learned from a Kel Dor during his squadron days back near the start of the Mandalorian Wars. As he scanned the way behind them, his hand moved instinctively for the blaster holstered beneath his jacket.

"I shouldn't imagine that will be necessary, Captain Onasi. Not in here, at any rate."

The voice didn't belong to Thalia. It had an oddly musical undertone to it. Carth whirled instantly, heart thumping.

The speaker was an Omwati. The fine-boned, delicate looking face was almost a full head below his, surrounded by feathery brown down.

After a moment, feeling slightly embarrassed by his overreaction, Carth forced himself to relax and stop glaring. He noted the robes of a Jedi Master, and the accompanying aura of unflappable serenity that was all too familiar. Something inside him plummeted as he found himself looking into a pair of very large, calm brown eyes.

Dealing with Jedi Masters, in his experience, made extracting blood from stones laughably simple by comparison. Right now, Dustil still missing, the Catcher Force knew where, he definitely wasn't in the mood for it.

"Funny. Given some of the things I've heard about this place lately, I'd have thought that having the means to defend yourself was a definite requirement." Even as the words slipped out, Carth knew that their harshness was unwarranted, and in the circumstances, likely to prove counterproductive. But it was too late to summon them back. He did however, finally let go of his hold on the blaster's grip.

There was a flicker of something in the Omwati's eyes that might or might not have been pained. It was quickly smoothed over. "Your companion appears to be just catching up with you now."

And she was.

Perfectly expressionless, and apparently unconcerned, Yolanda stepped up alongside him as if she'd never for a moment not been there.

He shot a questioning look her way, but she chose not to see it. Her face remained absolutely impassive. The words, _where the hell have you been_, rose to his lips but he strangled them back, all too aware that both Thalia and the Omwati Jedi Master were both watching him intently.

Not, all in all, the time to have this kind of discussion.

The thread of his temper frayed, on the edge of snapping. _Dammit Yolanda._

Her gaze bounced straight off his.

The Omwati made a show of not noticing, turning his attention Thalia's way. "And . . . Jedi May. My apologies for not extending my congratulations on your Knighthood earlier. My duties must have been distracting me more than I thought, because the announcement somehow managed to entirely pass me by."

_Huh?_

But whatever the Omwati was getting at, it seemed to strike a nerve. Thalia was suddenly stammering, the skin of her cheeks darkening. "I . . . I can explain Master Kwex." Carth saw her swallow nervously. "There was no announcement, because I. . ."

"I would suggest that you have the robes cleaned before you return them to their rightful owner," Kwex interrupted, smiling fractionally. "That way you can honestly say that you were simply being thoughtful."

Thalia's jaw clamped shut. After a moment, she nodded. "Thank you, Master Kwex." She turned and started to hurry away, seemingly very glad of the opportunity to escape.

He still needed to ask her about Dustil.

"Wait!" Carth called after her, not caring if he was being rude. "We haven't finished."

"You have questions, Captain Onasi," Kwex said. "Perhaps I can help you."

"Damn right, I have questions." Carth looked back at the Omwati. The fraying thread snapped completely. "First off, before everything else, I want to know what the hell you've done with my son."

-s-s-

Kreed got bored of staring at Nikos's back. "I know you're awake, boy. And since you've had me running messenger duty, I thought you might be at least vaguely interested in what I had to tell you. I see I was wrong."

Nikos jolted upright and turned around so quickly that it was almost comical. Kreed kept his face carefully impassive as he watched the young man struggling to keep his expression hard and cynical. He wasn't very successful, especially judged through the infra-red eye.

"You found her? Elendri?" The edge of eagerness in Nikos's voice trod the borders of desperation.

For a moment, Kreed considered lying. _Yeah kid, she's fine. Perfectly safe. Now tell me what I want to know_. It would probably go easier that way. Something held him back, though. It felt like it crossed a line somehow, which – given some of the acts he'd been a party to down the years – was sickly funny if you thought about it.

"I went to the address you gave me and waited. There was no one there. No one came."

Nikos's mouth opened. The flash of fear that briefly showed through almost made Kreed feel sympathetic. Almost. He cut him off before he could let loose the inevitable flood of jabbering questions. "I asked around. No one's seen her for the past twenty-four hours. She hasn't been into work." He snorted. "Her employer's a charmer, isn't she? All heart."

Suddenly Nikos was on his feet, pacing frantically in the confined space of his cell. Kreed half expected him to start pounding on the forcefield separating them with his bare fists, but self-control reasserted itself and he stopped.

"I have to get out of here." There was quiet, barely contained ferocity. "You understand that, Mandalorian?"

"Just the same way you understand that I can't let you out of there. Yeah kid, I think we're both aware of our respective positions on this one." Kreed didn't bother to hide the edge of boredom in his words. He had a dozen better things to be doing than rehashing the blindingly obvious.

The look that he got back was pure venom – blackly consuming hate.

"And, yeah Sithboy. I know. If you could still touch that Force thing of yours, I'd be all toasty warm and dancing with lightning right now. But hey, you can't. So, if I want to, I can drop that forcefield there and rip your fraking head off any time I choose. Sometimes life just flat out sucks, doesn't it?"

"Do you even have any balls, tin man?" That venom overflowed, spilling corrosively. "Or are you some kind of eunuch now? Not even half a man anymore."

Kreed simply smirked. "And I haven't heard that one several dozen times before, kid. Really. But anyway, when I want to be insulted, I can get that from Shak. He's always happy to oblige me, although come to think of it, he's no more creative than you are."

The silence that followed was sullen. Nikos resumed his pacing. Kreed could see the heat of his skin, glowing brightly; the too rapid flow of blood through veins just beneath the surface.

He sighed in disgust, most of it directed at himself. "Look kid. What could you do even if you got out? Whatever was going to happen to this girl of yours has happened. Sorry to be brutal here, but she's either safe, or she's dead. No action from you at this point is going to make the slightest shred of difference."

He made a couple of false starts before muttering: "You don't know that."

Kreed could hear the despair. "You _do_ know that," he countered.

Nikos collapsed back onto his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. Briefly, Kreed considered leaving him to stew for a while in the vague hope that he'd be more inclined towards cooperation after he'd had time for the reality of the situation to sink in a bit further. But he half suspected that time would only make him more stubborn, and when it came to it, he had his own reasons for pressing.

"I came through on my part of the bargain, kid. It's time for you to follow through on yours."

There was a snort. "You could be making all this up. Why should I believe a word you say?"

_For frak's sake._

"Because I'm telling you, you stupid little asswipe!" Kreed drew in a breath, then added in more measured tone. "And if I was making all this up, I'd have told you everything went fine and she's okay. _Much_ easier for me that way."

Silence.

Kreed grunted. "So let's start with your real name, shall we 'Nikos'?"

More silence. Predictably enough.

"My boss already knows it, I'm sure. Think about it. Why else would he be keeping a worthless waste of oxygen like you?" Rath hadn't been very forthcoming when Kreed had confronted him about it, still pretending ignorance. And Kreed hadn't felt inclined to push matters through to a full-scale confrontation on the subject. Not yet, anyway.

Still no response, which was getting more than slightly annoying.

"So telling me loses you nothing, whichever way you reckon it," he pressed.

"Since your boss obviously doesn't want you to know, it seems rather stupid on my part to risk antagonising him by telling you."

Kreed found himself gritting his teeth. "Yeah, very cleverly reasoned there, kid. You're a veritable genius. Funny though. You were willing enough to trust your girl's life to me – a half-mechanical Mandalorian thug you know next to nothing about. But you won't trust your name. Interesting set of priorities you have there."

Nikos's face was burning – a bright glowing disk. "You're no use to me anymore anyway."

Kreed shrugged. "I guess that's about what I expected from a Sith. No honour. Word means nothing. Yeah, no question, you managed to get the better of me on this one. Congratulations. Silly me."

They stared at each other for a moment. Nikos was the first to look away.

"If it were to gain me anything, I could make further efforts to find out just what happened to this Elendri. I have contacts. I could call in favours. _If_."

Nikos opened his mouth, then closed it again; wetted his lips. "Dustil."

"Dustil?" Kreed considered it a moment, but it wasn't immediately familiar. After all that messing about, it was in fact, damned anti-climactic. "You have a surname to go with that, Dustil?"

"Yes thanks."

Almost despite himself, Kreed felt one corner of his mouth twitch upwards – a fragmentary ghost of a smile. "Well then. I'm very happy for you." He decided, on balance, to let it pass for the moment. There were other things he wanted to know more. "So, anyway. These Sith you implied were after you. Was that just some line of bantha-crap you were spinning me, or is there really anything in it?"

He saw Dustil glance down briefly at the floor before taking a deep breath. "She said her name was Morrigance . . ."

-s-s-

His name was Cardo.

Cardo Bruss. He possessed the sort of face you could walk past every day of your life without ever truly seeing. Three weeks ago, he had been called Threm Mothma, and two months before that, Prax Arcan. It was so long since he'd been his real self that that aspect of him scarcely seemed important any more. If you spent all your life being other people, then eventually there came a point when it stopped being a pretence.

Right now, Cardo watched. It was, after all, what he did best.

And three storeys below his position overlooking the secluded square, his target came into view.

Human. Male. Dark-skinned. Late twenties. 1.82 metres tall. 90 kilos, give or take. Last seen sporting a shaven head and neatly-razored beard. Every point in the checklist ticked off precisely.

_Punctual too_. Punctuality was a trait that Cardo admired. It made his work so much easier.

And a Dark Jedi.

Cardo's Force talents had never amounted to much – just the tinniest of flickering flames. If he'd been sent to one of the Sith Academies, he would never have made it through that kind of training alive. Fortunately, his current employer had been able to see more than that in him, putting his _particular_ abilities to use in fields that suited him far more.

As a spotter and tracker of other Force sensitives, he had proved himself to be second to none.

Even old Jaq had had to defer to him on that one skill, and everyone had always acknowledged Jaq as _the_ master. Cardo smiled slightly in reminiscence. Jaq had certainly had the knack for making them scream.

This one below him now figuratively _shone_ with power.

The Catcher. Cardo knew both the name and reputation, and gazing down at the man below him, waiting calmly in the shadows, he didn't doubt any of it for a moment. It was an honour, in its way. Two consummate professionals, both at work.

_Do not approach. Do not engage under any circumstances. Lock on and track until further word is received._

With steady, measured movements, Cardo opened the long, slender case he carried and pulled out a number of segments, which were assembled smoothly and swiftly into something that bore an extremely strong resemblance to a sniper rifle.

_Whatever you say, lady. Whatever you say._

Shifting the rifle to his shoulder, he drew a bead on his target through the telescopic sight. The Catcher hadn't shifted in all this time, and appeared to be entirely unaware that he was now square in the middle of someone else's gun sights.

This was the tricky bit. Sometimes – very occasionally – they sensed it, just before he pulled the trigger.

But not, apparently, the Catcher. The Catcher kept on scanning the square impassively; kept on waiting, apparently entirely calm and in control.

Hunting the hunter. Cardo found that notion obscurely satisfying.

The beam produced by the rifle was invisible except when viewed through the rifle's own sight, where it showed up as a thin, precisely defined green line. In itself, it was harmless. It acted purely as a painter, marking its target with a signature of charged particles that could be tracked from as far away as a spacecraft sitting in orbit.

A favourite trick, on those occasions where they hadn't wanted to capture a particular Jedi for the purposes of reconditioning, had been to paint one with the charged particles and let a capital ship or weapons platform take them out from several thousand kilometres away. That kind of turbolaser shot was far beyond the capability of a lightsaber to deflect, and had a blast radius no amount of prior warning would help you dodge.

Perhaps it lacked a certain visceral satisfaction, but to Cardo, the comedic value more than made up for that lack. He often had himself in stitches imaging the expressions on their faces just before the annihilating blast hit home.

This time, alas, there would be nothing quite so . . . dramatic.

The beam struck true, hitting the Catcher's shoulder. He didn't appear to notice or react. If they didn't sense the trigger pull then they never did. Cardo held it in position for a three count, making sure that the signature he painted was a strong one.

Except . . .

Visible in the sight, the beam from the rifle was emerging from the Catcher's back to hit a spot on the wall directly behind him, painting that instead.

As Cardo stared, understanding dawned. He realised belatedly that there was no longer any kind of Force sense from the figure standing down below.

Which meant . . .

Cardo swore, ducking away from the window and pressing his back tight to the wall as he hastily disassembled the rifle. His heart thudded percussively. His hands wanted to shake and he could feel sweat suddenly beginning to bead on his forehead.

_Hunting the hunter_. Suddenly that took on a whole new and particularly horrible meaning.

Inside Cardo's head, as if on cue, gleeful laughter resounded. Suddenly, his throat had contracted down to something like a pinhole . . .

And from beyond the room's doorway, intense blue light flared.

-s-s-

It was akin to racing through a maze that was rapidly unmaking itself behind your heels, collapsing into a chaotically churning sea of decaying synapses and misfiring neurons. To slow or stumble was to be caught up in the inexorable slide into entropy and lose oneself utterly. Somehow, that danger only added a piquancy and thrill, which was in its own way powerfully addictive.

Images and patterns flashed in front of the Catcher as he sped unerringly through the unravelling labyrinth. Scents, sounds. Everything keyed in a way that defied logical examination.

To an inexperienced eye, the sensory flashes were simply another symptom of the encroaching chaos, utterly confusing and near-overwhelming in their intensity – an overlapping collage of hallucination and insanity. The Catcher, though, was able to spot threads amid the jumble, zeroing in on what interested him and discarding what did not, chasing it down through twisted, near infinitely complex pathways fractions before it was swallowed up and lost forever.

And the more he chased, the more was revealed; little disordered fragments accruing into something larger. A name. Another. A flash of mirror-polished metal. A face, imprinted on a datapad. An address. A voice, cold and blank – oddly familiar. A building. The voice again. And there, with crystal clarity: _the boy has been secured_.

There was more, but the rate of decay was increasing exponentially now, everything twisting and distorting, like film warping in fire. The critical juncture had been reached.

He let go. No, this one would not enhance the collection. Another Sith-twisted killer, damaged beyond repair. Too many of those already . . .

The last remnants of the man who called himself Cardo Bruss slid away, swallowed by the frothing tide of onrushing darkness. For a moment, the Catcher stood watching the whole vast entropic tsunami – a titanic, all-consuming black wall – sweeping down towards him, as if daring it to take him too.

Then, at the absolute last instant possible, he drew away.

-s-s-

"What was that?"

Bliss, several metres ahead of Ulvol Ellas and moving rapidly despite her all too apparent handicaps, was no more than a wispy outline of flickering blue in the pervasive dead grey fog. She gave no sign of having heard him, and didn't pause, simply dwindling even further as his own pace faltered.

"Please, Bliss. Wait. Talk to me," he called after her, louder this time – more urgent.

She heard him. He knew that she heard him. Here, hearing wasn't truly a function of sound, and he was starting to reach the hesitant conclusion that there were no physical laws anymore; simply the limitations that your own consciousness chose in order to anchor itself.

The implications of that . . . as yet he hadn't had the chance to fully think it through.

But despite hearing him, Bliss didn't pause or give any acknowledgement. She wanted to get away from him, he knew.

With a sigh, Ellas started to run. What did it matter now if it was beneath the dignity of an adult Camaasi to run? In this place, dignity was barely even a concept, and a Jedi who allowed himself to be crippled by the need for dignity was barely a Jedi at all.

_Not that you were a Jedi when you died_.

He ignored the pessimistic inner voice. Unfortunately though, running didn't seem to help him close the gap between them. She wanted to be away from him just as much as he wanted to catch up to her, and with no physical factors involved, that meant stalemate.

Frustration surged. He needed to talk to her. He needed to . . .

And there, amid the frustration, another realisation crept up, almost taking him unawares. This place . . . the Force. It _had_ to, in some way or other, be a construct off it, and whilst he might no longer be able to look inward and touch it like he once had, perhaps he could reach out . . .

Blink. Snap.

Everything around him shifted instantly and completely. And there he was, standing directly in front of her. The suddenness of it made the entire burned, colour-drained forest gyrate.

"So what is it, fool of a Jedi?" Fire dripped and spat, fuelled by her rage. He tried not to flinch away from the heat, telling himself that it wasn't real.

Now that he was standing in front of her, under the scrutiny of her boiling eyes, it became difficult to put it all into words.

But a short time ago, for the span of a few seconds, the entire universe around them had been somehow . . . different. A weight that he'd barely been aware of when it was there, had lifted.

Now it was back, heavy and oppressive.

But in that brief span of its absence, he had experienced something like hope – the belief that there were other, different possibilities to this.

-s-s-

Slowly, breathing deeply, the Catcher raised his head, his forehead breaking contact with that of the now cooling corpse. He still remained crouched over the body, for all the unpleasantly strong stench of charred flesh that hung on the air.

In his head, he was distilling the images he'd glimpsed; the sounds and voices, fitting it all together into something that – to him at least – contained a semblance of coherence.

It had been something of a surprise to find that this man had once been a Sith: a Jedi killer and one of the assassin corps. That had been absolutely the last thing he'd been expecting to find. Since his nominal employer, Auza, was now dead, it meant there were other players in this game he hadn't previously been aware of.

He wasn't quite sure yet how he felt about this.

The voice, familiar but not quite: _the_ _boy has been secured_.

_The boy. The boy. The boy_.

Then shortly afterwards, connected to the first: _place yourself at Yolanda's disposal during my absence_.

Yolanda. Another link. Another line. There had been a Yolanda in Carth Onasi's head. The woman accompanying him on Berchest and Kamari. Was she a Sith too perhaps? He turned the notion over like a jeweller with a precious stone, looking at it from different angles and trying to spot flaws. On several levels the irony of _that_ was quite delightful.

_Do not approach. Do not engage under any circumstances. Lock on and track until further word is received._ Yolanda's voice this time.

_So given all of that, the boy must be . . .._ He grinned. There had been no images or names in Bruss's dying thoughts. No explicit connections. But the Catcher could extrapolate the boy's identity well enough on his own. Oh yes.

And then he was back to that _other_ voice. The first one. He let it resonate inside him, until his entire being thrummed with it. The one he knew, or should know.

A mask – a mirror where a face should be. Where did that come from? The voice originated from behind the mask, its humanity stripped away and rendered into something frigidly mechanical.

A mask, like Revan's.

A voice connected to Revan's.

A voice of the past. A voice that, until just now, he had long assumed belonged to one of the dead.

He stopped, rocking back on his haunches. _Could it be?_

"Morrigance?" he asked softly, brow creasing. His eyes were focused on something far beyond the room's fire-blackened walls. Slowly, a smile spread across his lips. "Is that you?"

Abruptly, he stood up, the movement reminiscent of an uncoiling serpent. In his mind 's eye, he saw a path, winding its way through the gloom. It glimmered enticingly.

And suddenly Jedi Padawans named Thalia May – and the reasons for them missing rendezvous – seemed much less interesting than previously.

-s-s-

Tamar stared at the ship filling the view screen in front of him.

It was an impressive looking ship, and in all probability worth staring at. A brand new, state of the art Coruscant class heavy battlecruiser that almost matched the _Leviathan_ for size and sleek, predatory deadliness. From what he'd heard, the Coruscant class incorporated painfully learnt lessons from Rakatan technology, urgently commissioned by Fleet Command in an effort to counter the Sith fleet's vast ship for ship superiority.

The first one had rolled of the Kuat shipyards production line five months after the battle of the Star Forge, too late to make a difference to the war that had been its origin. Supposedly, there were now a grand total of four of the things in existence. Astronomically expensive, production had immediately been scaled back with the end of open hostilities. Rumour had it that Kuat systems had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy trying to produce the things on schedule and to cost.

Yet one of the four was all the way out here, in a system on the outer rim that was no longer even a part of the Republic.

Compared to it, even the _Rancorous_ seemed relatively puny. They were certainly heavily outgunned. And that didn't even take into account the trio of interdictor frigates lurking in the Republic vessel's shadow.

"Well, they're serious about this." Canderous commented dryly. "Got to give 'em that much."

Tamar grunted. Far too serious for his liking. He tried, not very successfully, to make light of it. "Kind of gives me a warm glow, you know? Makes me feel all wanted."

"Yeah. I'll bet."

"We're being hailed," one of the Echani bridge crew – a white haired female – stated. The actual voice was calm, but Tamar could sense the underlying tension. "They're demanding that we immediately power down all weapon systems, drop shields, and prepare to be boarded."

"Belay that for now, shall we?" Yuthura stated, stepping forward. Tamar could sense the tension in her too – see it in the unnatural stillness of her headtails and the way she held herself, one hand clasping the other wrist behind her back. He recognised the body language from when he'd first met her on Korriban. Armour on. Universe locked out.

He stifled a sigh; nodded towards the comm. officer. The situation wasn't just going to sort itself out on its own. "Open a channel, please. I'll try to talk to them."

_However much good that might accomplish_. People with big guns tended not to be good listeners. They generally didn't have to be. And he already had a fair idea of what they wanted.

"No. Hold that."

Tamar jolted. The voice was so far outside its normal tone that it took him a moment to recognise it. He looked round, frowning. "With due respect here, Jolee. This isn't the . . ."

"With due respect, _I'm_ the Jedi Master here, and I'm pulling rank on you. Now, kindly stand aside." There was no hint of crotchety old man. No rambling. No faked senility. Just quiet, steely resolve that suggested in no uncertain terms that arguing with it would be entirely futile.

Tamar barely managed to keep himself from gawping.

A brief bit of the normal Jolee flashed through. "You talk to them, sonny, and that's half our options gone, straight out the airlock. So go stand somewhere back there . . ." He made a vague waving motion towards the back of bridge. "Keep quiet, and do what you do best. Look dumb and hopeless. Yeah, that's it perfectly. Well done."

"Wait. You aren't seriously thinking of resisting here?" Bastila started, apparently unable to contain herself. "This is . . ."

"Not now please, Bastila." Jolee told her calmly, startling her to silence.

He stepped up to the comm. position. "Now, if I could . . ."

Tamar had about a microsecond of advance warning through the Force. Not enough time to even start to brace himself. Before Jolee could finish what he was saying, there was a thunderous jolt. The deck tilted violently beneath him and suddenly he was flat on his face, struggling vainly to draw breath back into his lungs as his mind tried to rewind and fill in the intervening steps. The pain in his skull was somewhat akin to being nailed between the eyes by a hydrospanner.

The Republic battlecruiser, grown impatient from the lack of response, had opened fire.

His head cleared slowly and he hauled himself upright, the sharp reek of smoke and fried ozone filling his nostrils. The comm. console, its operator still lying in a heap, crackled to life.

"Hutt vessel identifying itself as the _Rancorous_, I repeat, power down your weapons _now_, lower your shields and prepare to be boarded. We are fully authorised to use all necessary force in obtaining your cooperation. The next shot will not be a warning."

_Oh yeah. Some bloody warning_.

Jolee, blood trickling down his face from a nasty looking cut on his scalp, leant on the comm. console like it was a walking frame. He coughed, clearing his throat. "This is _Jedi Master_ Jolee Bindo, on warranted business of the Jedi Council. Identify and explain yourself, boy. And be sure to make it damn good. I _really_ don't appreciate being fired on by my own side."

There was a pause where the open comm. channel crackled and whistled hollowly. Not quite the answer they'd been expecting, obviously.

Tamar took the time to glance across at Bastila, who was rubbing at a rapidly forming bruise on the side of her face. She looked shaken but was blocking him off, that act seemingly instinctive now in times of stress. Canderous was scowling in a manner that suggested he'd quite like rip someone's head off and spit down their neck. It didn't matter who particularly, just whichever unfortunate bastard happened to be closest at hand. It looked like the floor had taken more damage where he'd hit it than vice versa.

Of those not occupying the bridge's acceleration couches, only Yuthura seemed to have escape entirely unscathed.

Suddenly there was a voice speaking in his ear. "Hey, what the hell is going on, you guys? Me and Zee are trying to have a game of Dejarik here."

Mission. In other circumstances, Tamar might have smiled. "Trouble," he answered her sub-audibly after a slight pause.

"Well durr. That figures. But you think maybe you could time your trouble for when I'm _not_ winning here?"

"I'll bear that in mind for next time. Now, find somewhere you can strap yourself in. Things may get a little bumpy from here."

Mission started to say something else, but he cut her off. "Sorry, Mish. Can't really talk now."

The comm. station came back to life: "To re-emphasise, Jedi Master Bindo, power down your weapons, lower your shields and prepare to receive boarding parties."

"Yes, I heard you the first time. Tell me sonny, what flavour of idiot do you take me for, exactly? You trigger happy parade of nerf-brains open fire on us without provocation, and you now expect us to give you a clearer shot for next time?"

The pause was much briefer this time.

The voice on the other end of the link had changed. It was now female; hard as starship hulls. "Master Bindo, this is Admiral Morna Rey of the Republic Command Ship, _Unerring Vigilance_. The warrant I have just tightbeamed across to you gives me full authority, in the name of Republic Fleet and Senate, to either detain, or if necessary, to eliminate anyone standing in the way of its execution. Any orders under which you may be operating are hereby immediately superseded, and I must insist upon your full and unequivocal cooperation. I trust I am one hundred percent clear?"

Jolee made a gesture to cut the comm., and a moment later pulled up an image of the transmitted warrant, replacing the _Unerring Vigilance_ on the main view screen.

On a quick scan Tamar picked out words such as 'Tamar De'Nolo', 'mass-murder', 'treason', 'evading lawful arrest', 'alive or dead', plus an extremely lengthy and detailed list of sanctions that would befall anyone who impeded or otherwise refused to cooperate with the bearer of the warrant in any way.

"This is all very interesting, Admiral." Tamar saw Jolee scratch the tip of his nose. The flow of blood running down his face seemed to have slowed slightly. "And don't hesitate to correct me if I'm mistaken here, but the authority and actions of the Jedi Council do not come under the jurisdiction of either Fleet Command or the Senate. So I don't really see how any of this applies to me."

Across the link, there was a hiss that wasn't just static. Static, as a rule, tended not to do exasperation. "Master Bindo, I have written assurances that the Jedi Council will cooperate fully in this matter."

"Funny, no one seems to have bothered telling me about this . . ."

"Then I suggest you . . ."

Jolee continued as if the Admiral hadn't started speaking. "When I receive direct notification from the Jedi Council, I assure you that you shall have my full cooperation. Until that time, I have my own orders, and must ask respectfully – " There was nothing remotely respectful about Jolee's tone of voice then " – that you stand aside."

Tamar almost laughed despite himself at the sheer barefaced audacity.

"You don't deny that Revan is aboard your vessel." Suddenly even the brittle veneer of civility was gone from Morna Rey's voice.

Jolee's head tilted, as if in surprise. "Since Revan has been declared legally dead, I'd be absolutely astonished if he was."

"You know very well what I mean, Jedi!" There was a pause, the Admiral seemingly attempting to re-gather the fragments of her temper. "We may all be pantomiming that nonsense in public, but I don't need to taste nerf crap to recognise it . . .."

Whatever else the Admiral might have been about to add was lost as a proximity alarm went off and the comm. link went dead.

"Sir, we've got another dozen ships come out of nowhere directly behind us."

Tamar fought hard not to swear. "More Republic?" Not that there'd been much chance of evading anyway, but if it was, that option had suddenly dropped away to nil. He was aware of Jolee glowering at him, but ignored him.

A delay, feverish activity among the bridge crew. "Negative."

The viewscreen shifted to present an aft view; several mismatched corvettes, a small collection of gunboats and, at the centre, one much larger vessel. The sight of it stirred an uncomfortable, crawling sense of familiarity.

Obviously not all of the old Mandalorian invasion fleet had been turned into high tech bank vaults. Some had been more salvageable. The garish blue, grey and red colour scheme of the Eres navy did little to disguise its sleekly muscular lines.

To no one's great surprise, the comm. crackled to life yet again – a third different voice this time. "This is Captain Naveen of the Independent Eres III Navy. _Unerring Vigilance_ and the _Rancorous_, stand down immediately. I repeat, stand down immediately. You are in violation of Independent Eres III territory and regulations . . ."

Tamar couldn't help but roll his eyes. _Here we go again_.

-s-s-

Blue flame flared briefly in the light of an apartment window, then died.

A few people noticed it in passing, but they simply hurried onwards, trying to pretend that it hadn't been anything truly out of the ordinary. This wasn't the sort of neighbourhood where inquisitiveness was considered to be a virtue.

A few seconds later, all evidence of his presence safely incinerated, the Catcher descended the fire escape at the back of the building. His head was abuzz with newly lifted images and patterns.

Ahead of him, the trail had taken on a greater solidity. Another link had been forged. The Catcher smiled.

To the Agatan. A particular landing bay. A particular ship. A mercenary named Rath Gannaya.

-s-s-

The silence had an edge of near-monomolecular sharpness.

Then both Carth and Thalia started trying to speak at once, over the top of one another. A short time later, they clammed up again at the exact same moment, glaring at each other.

Seated off to one side, Yolanda watched the scene play out with a combination of cynical amusement and all out dread. It was a piquant but not altogether pleasant mixture. At least – and this counted as the smallest of mercies – Carth seemed to be so focused on the matter of his son, that the idea of using Thalia May to chase down and confront the Catcher had thus far escaped him.

It certainly hadn't escaped her.

She tried to breathe normally; tried to see a way through this that didn't involve everything disintegrating into jagged little pieces around her. Except . . . the more she tried the more convinced she became that there simply _wasn't_ a way through. One way or another, she had to let something go.

That should have been so _very_ simple.

"You Jedi just can't stay out of matters that don't concern you, can you? You always have to interfere." The venom in Carth's voice took her by surprise. There was real fury in it. "Every fraking time."

"I . . . I hardly think that's fair." Thalia seemed to Yolanda to be struggling to meet Carth's gaze then. "Your son was . . . in trouble. He needed help, and it wasn't as if you were around to give it."

_Ouch._

Earlier on, Master Kwex had led them all through from the Temple's grand entrance hall to his quarters, doing a fair impression of an infinitely patient schoolteacher chivvying along unruly and oversized children. They were now ensconced in his personal quarters, which – a couple of sweeping, airy sculptures that Yolanda assumed were mementoes of his homeworld aside – did a very good job of conforming to every stereotype of unworldly, detached from reality Jedi Master there was going. Minimalist barely began to describe it.

A self-deprecating smile had pre-empted their reactions. _My apologies for the state of the décor. Unfortunately, the majority of my possessions perished on Dantooine_, had been the words.

Yolanda concentrated on the wood grain patterns of the plain table around which they all sat; let the surrounding turmoil pass over her. It didn't help with her internal search for a solution.

Carth, inevitably, boiled over. Not even Master Kwex managed to leap in in time to head it off.

"So this is my fault all of a sudden, is it?"

"I . . ." Thalia began, but it was like trying to swim uphill through setting plastocrete.

"Dustil was doing absolutely fine right up until the moment you showed up on his doorstep, wanting to drag him back. He'd already told you he wanted nothing more to do with the Jedi or the Force, but you just couldn't accept that, could you? Couldn't take no for an answer. Where do you get off exactly, barging in to peoples' lives and tearing families apart; ruining their lives?"

"Captain Onasi, please." It was Kwex who cut in, fire-fighting futilely. "There were other, urgent considerations at issue here . . ."

Carth rounded on him. "So you had something to do with this too, did you?"

Kwex blinked, taken aback. "Not personally, no . . ."

Carth's anger didn't seem to be fading. If anything it seemed to be gathering strength and intensity, the flames fanned and fed. "If any of your next few words involve phrases like 'the Will of the Force' or the 'Need to put aside personal attachments' then I suggest you just stop. _Right there_."

As she looked at the Omwati, Yolanda felt a small pang of sympathy. Particularly since Carth at the moment looked capable, and all too willing, to rip Kwex's head off at the slightest provocation, real or imagined.

It was certainly instructive. A side of him she hadn't seen.

"I do sympathise with your viewpoint, Captain. Honestly." The Omwati seemed to be picking his words with great care. "But it isn't, alas, quite as simple as you would have it. When the Force chooses to manifest within an individual, for good or ill, it cannot simply be denied or ignored. It won't simply go away if you pretend it isn't there, and if a person fails to receive proper training and instruction on how to cope with what they are experiencing then the consequences can be terrible indeed – and not just for themselves . . ."

Carth snorted. Loudly. "Proper training and instruction?" Sarcasm didn't so much drip as pour.

The silence lasted for all of a heartbeat, before Carth plunged on.

"It seems to me that half of those you train end up falling to the dark side, while the remainder end up so scarred by the experience that they're barely functional as sentients. From what I've seen, those who do come through more or less intact, do so despite the training they receive rather than because of it."

The pale fan of lines around Kwex's eyes hardened perceptibly at that.

When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, but there was now a definite steeliness to it. "We Jedi are far from perfect, Captain, I acknowledge. And some of our number in particular are still to come to terms with just how imperfect we have actually proved ourselves to be. Our mistakes in recent times . . . to call them disastrous would be to understate, and collectively we have yet to take proper responsibility for that." He leant forward slightly then, fingers steepling together. "But to judge someone or something solely in terms of their mistakes and failings is, I have always felt, _never_ a satisfactory response."

A grunt. Nothing more.

Kwex was looking at Carth penetratingly now. "Do you know anything, perhaps, of galactic history from before the time the Jedi Order came into existence?"

"And what the frak does that have to do with anything?"

Yolanda had to suppress a jolt. For all his anger, hearing Carth swear in front of a Jedi Master just seemed . . . out of character. Perhaps it was all down to the sudden hair loss, she thought dryly, but couldn't raise much in the way of amusement at the thought.

Kwex sat back again, and the steely edge submerged itself. "Just that, for all our flaws and imperfections, I think the alternatives are much, much worse. Continuous chaotic Force-wars between those driven to madness and delusion by their own untrained powers. In response, the cycles of galaxy-wide genocide against anyone even suspected of being Force sensitive. Galactic civilisation almost died in those early days before it had the chance to fully form. We would do well to remember what our dissolution would mean alongside everything else. And the Jedi do not have a monopoly on errors, even in recent times."

After a prolonged silence, Carth too seemed to step back – albeit by fractional degree. Yolanda noted the set of his shoulder muscles shift just slightly.

Though he couldn't, apparently, resist one more dig. "Funny, isn't it, how your interest in the spiritual welfare of my son managed to persist solely for the amount of time that he was conveniently at hand, then vanished entirely the moment he went missing." He glanced Thalia's way. "Assuming that you're being entirely honest as opposed to semantically creative when you say that you have no idea where Dustil currently is."

Thalia started to rise to it, but Kwex stayed her with a slight gesture of one pale blue hand.

"There, I think, we can both agree we have been seriously remiss. Padawans May and Algwinn are the only ones to emerge with any credit here at all." The last part was emphasised, but if it was meant to placate Carth, then the effect seemed negligible.

_And if he's run away off world in an effort to escape the Jedi's attentions, that's just about the best thing that can have happened right now. Think about it a moment, please Carth._

"We will, of course, render any aid we can in locating your son, Captain."

"Just. Tell. Me. Where. He. Is."

The length of Kwex's pause told Yolanda immediately that it wasn't going to be remotely as simple as that. And any answer was going to involve technical explanation of the nature of the Force, and why it wasn't possible, which was going to be like waving a red-rag to a Reek in Carth's current mood.

Thalia, however, forestalled any of that by clearing her throat. Yolanda wasn't sure whether to be impressed with her bravery or lament her stupidity. "I didn't just forget about Dustil when he disappeared, Captain. Part of my duties as a Padawan involves working with the dispossessed of the undercity . . ."

And by implication, the less . . . salubrious elements too. Yolanda picked up on the tiny sidelong glance that Thalia directed Master Kwex's way, but from what she'd seen, she suspected that the Omwati was far more worldly and practical than his appearance and air initially suggested. He was hardly going to be shocked.

"I managed to trace some of the steps he took after his . . . disappearance. I know he conducted a transaction with an identity broker by the name of Terrol Chan, although when I approached him, Chan declined to deal with me. I never had the chance to pursue the matter further . . ."

At that, Carth shot upright as if he was spring-loaded. Something to do. Something to chase. In a way, he was so predictable. "Well then. It looks like you're going to show me how to find this Chan, doesn't it? Right about now would be good."

"Captain." Master Kwex rose to his feet too. "I implore you to show patience here, and consider the consequences of rushing in blindly. This Sith assassin that you mentioned. There was a reason he was trying to lure Padawan May into meeting with him."

Carth glared daggers at him.

"Perhaps it would be more beneficial to your son if you concentrated – with our help – on seeing to the assassin's apprehension. It would seem to me a less . . . speculative course, and avoids the risk of leading him in Dustil's direction."

And suddenly Yolanda would have quite happily snapped the Jedi Master's slender, bird-like neck with her bare hands. Her skin felt like ice.

"You don't have children, do you Master Kwex?" Carth asked quietly.

"No, I don't."

"Then I wouldn't expect you to understand." Carth started to turn away, and Yolanda felt a vast swell of relief.

Which cut off again in the very next instant as Kwex spoke again. "Someone who I understand is a good friend of yours arrived back at the Temple recently. Could I suggest that you at least speak to her before you depart?"

He stopped. "Who?"

"Jedi Juhani."

-s-s-

The Orbital weapons platform's defensive shield flared brightly, before caving in under concentrated fire from four sleek, blade-like Living-Fleet destroyers. Its armour held out just under a second longer against sustained, withering bombardment. An instant later, the entire thing exploded in a silent flash of superheated vapour.

Instantly, swarms of drone fighters poured through the gap that opened up, moving in ever-shifting, precisely mathematical formations that made the watching Admiral Bortha's flesh creep. Ragged, over-pressed squadrons of defending snub fighters attempted desperately to come about and intercept, but were despatched summarily with a precision that bordered upon the surgical. More, smaller winking lights, that flared briefly, before fading away in motes of sparkling dust.

A lightshow. That's what this had been reduced to.

It certainly couldn't be said to qualify as war.

And Bortha had long since had to re-evaluate any prejudices he'd held on the relative merits of drone and living pilots. Grim observation had shown that there was indeed no contest.

Almost resignedly, his attention shifted from one breach in the enemy's lines to another. Three Living-Fleet battle cruisers, tight abreast as if this was nothing more than a training exercise designed to showcase the talents of their captains, picked apart a gigantic but less manoeuvrable dreadnought mercilessly.

Eventually, one of the massive vessel's portside engines blew out concussively, sending its crippled bulk spinning away like a drunken Gamorrean attempting a balletic pirouette. Bortha watched the chaotic, spiralling path of its fall as though hypnotised by the sick inevitability of the spectacle.

The dreadnought's uncontrolled plunge terminated abruptly as it slammed into a vast construction bay in which the hulking shell of a ship very similar to itself was taking shape. The flash of light from this was the brightest yet, a shell of white-hot glowing plasteel debris fragments expanding rapidly outward in silently serene and deadly splendour.

Those scenes were repeated right across the board, all the myriad and supposedly impregnable defences of the Dantalus shipyards seeming to collapse in on themselves at once under a relentless assault that appeared to come simultaneously from every direction. Only the surrounding vacuum prevented the entire thing going up under the sustained pounding it was receiving, and that was just a matter of time . . .

The bizarre synchronicity of the situation mocked Bortha incessantly – a constant, sniggering laughter echoing inside his head.

This was always how Darth Malefic's campaign of ascension had been going to culminate – one final all out assault on Darth Auza's stronghold, at the end of which Malefic would be left unchallenged as the one true Dark Lord of the Sith. Except . . . inside Bortha's head, it had never, ever been quite like _this_.

For one thing, Auza was already dead. Which rendered this assault more or less entirely superfluous.

And as for Malefic . . .. Bortha suppressed a heavy shudder.

Another half-assembled hulk tore free of its moorings and smashed apart. A third exploded brightly. The sheer wastefulness of it all burned sourly in the back of his throat. It seemed to hark back to the later days of Malak's reign, where destruction was an end in itself rather than a means. _Telos. Taris_. Collective insanity.

_Through strength, I gain victory_.

Except a victory in which you ended up destroying the prize you sought didn't, to Bortha, seem like much of a victory at all.

So they were destroying one of the three largest shipyards in Sith space, when they already lagged so far behind the Republic in that regard it was frightening. And if rumour was to be believed, Ziost had now disintegrated into so many fragmentary and conflicting factions intent on each other's mutual destruction that it was virtually impossible to count them. The Sith had become a snake ravenously devouring its own tail, assiduously destroying themselves without need of any outside intervention.

And there, briefly, hatred flared.

Hatred of a reflective steel mask, and the name Morrigance Fel. Hatred of the unending, self-destructive stupidity that went on and on. From where he was sitting, it had almost begun to seem like she was hell bent on bringing every last one of them crashing to their doom – of fanning flames to the point where all that would be left was fine grey ash.

That hatred soon faded though, collapsing under its own weight into a smouldering mix of low grade anger and despair.

And fear.

_Let us not forget the fear._

Bortha almost laughed then, but Captains – no _Admirals_, he reminded himself bitterly – did not go in for such hysterical displays. They especially did not do so in the presence of subordinates.

No, in the Sith Fleet, one had to be a Dark Jedi to get away with the more actively frothing varieties of madness. Then, of course, it was practically de rigueur.

_Malefic._

Bortha felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. The battle still going on, nominally under his command, faded to a kind of animated wallpaper. His input would make exactly zero difference to the outcome anyway.

_Malefic._

And though his body remained fixed firmly where it was, his mind descended, sucked back into the heart of the ship beneath – drawn into the centre of an inescapable singularity.

_Pressure, screaming in his skull. Each forward step was like wading waist-deep in molasses. _

_He could taste blood in his mouth from where he was, almost unnoticed, biting down too hard on his bottom lip. Flanking him, Lieutenants Valaska and Benazares shied back like scared dogs trying to pull free of the leashes dragging them along. _

_Not that he blamed them. If he could have turned back then, he would have done. _

_Frak the idea – the sheer, insane ludicrousness – of facing Malefic and trying to explain himself. How _that_ notion had even begun to germinate, he could no longer remotely comprehend. _

_Except now, it had become a kind of compulsion, free will an irrelevance. Walking, hypnotised, straight down the monster's throat._

_Except now, it was far too late._

_There was a circle of light in the hot, throbbing, living darkness ahead. In the centre of that circle of light was the cage. Inside the cage, trapped and cocooned, was a singe figure._

_Was Malefic._

_If you could still call him that. _

_Bortha stared. Something gibbered in the basement of his head._

_What was left of the would be Dark Lord resembled a mummy dressed in the most truly bizarre and elaborate of burial regalia. So many fibres and threads and glittering metal cables wrapped and pierced the body in the cage that it seemed like they were growing out of him, alive. Malefic's previously monumental physique appeared to have withered and collapsed – a seedpod that had split open, its contents sprouting and blooming in a frenzied, fecund tangle._

_Amidst all that, the only part that seemed undespoiled was the face._

That face . .

_The eyes blinked, slowly – lizard-like. Bortha jolted violently – took a hasty backwards step. That face was _looking_ at him._

_To begin with it seemed as white as polished bone, all colour drained from it, the scar running down the middle a livid lightning flash. As Bortha watched, flickers of colour – shoals of tiny, darting fish – played fleetingly across the surface scales._

_That colour became more and more intense._

_The pressure in Bortha's skull intensified to shattering proportions. Dimly he was aware of letting out a strangled, groaning scream, a blood vessel inside his nose bursting from the strain._

_"You, I am ordered not to harm."_

_It was impossible to tell if the words were spoken aloud or simply planted directly into his head. With them came the rancid foetor of insanity._

_At his side, Lieutenant Valaska let out a thin, desperate wail. A fraction of a second later, he jerked up off the ground like a puppet being yanked around by a particularly clumsy puppeteer. Benazares, looking around frantically for somewhere to flee, managed two faltering steps before he too was lifted of the ground._

"_You_, I am ordered not to harm."

_And Bortha knew then that all there was left was the monster. Dark Lord redux._

_Both Valaska and Benazares were now making strange, thin whining sounds – too terrified to manage anything quite as coherent as a scream. Valaska was kicking wildly, trying vainly to jerk free of the force holding him. Benazares simply hung there limply, sweat pouring off him in torrents as he slowly revolved._

_Bortha screwed his eyes shut. The air pressure changed abruptly. _

_Cringing, Bortha felt his ears pop. The sound – a horrible drawn out twisting, tearing, cracking and buckling cartilage sound – was enough to leave him gagging, bile rising into his throat. It just would not stop._

_Briefly, Benazares did manage to scream, though it choked off quickly into gruesome, liquid gargling as the tearing cartilage noise became much softer and wetter. Something splattered and dripped copiously across the floor._

You, I am ordered not to harm.

_The hold – the compulsion to remain where he was – shattered. Bortha turned and fled, leaving what was left of his two officers – little more than gelid sacks of pulverised, semi-liquescent flesh and bone splinters – still floating and twitching in the air._

_Malefic's laughter – the ship's laughter; whatever the hybrid really was now – echoed madly after him._

Vorsk Bortha drew in a shuddering breath; came back to himself.

In front of him, up on the viewscreens, the battle was winding down to its inevitable conclusion, what remained of Dantalus's defenders attempting to break clear of the slaughter and flee. Even at that, they were only sporadically successful.

Describing it as a rout dignified it with too much order and control.

The shipyards themselves looked to have been pounded down to semi-molten metal and twisted, drifting fragments.

So here he sat, Admiral of the Living Fleet. Master of everything he surveyed. In his head laughter seemed to echo hollowly, and the fear threatened to rise up and swallow him whole.

Master, at least, until another loophole or oversight in Morrigance's orders allowed that mad thing bound at the ship's core to decide otherwise.

-s-s-

"Enough!"

Silence. Just briefly, fragile as eggshells. The arguments cut off.

Memories of school playgrounds that had never, ever been his played briefly in Tamar's head. There were certainly more and better examples of decorum and diplomacy in those false constructs than currently being display in front of him. Even Jolee seemed on the verge of being drawn into the incipient melee, though Tamar couldn't quite be sure if the old man was truly as wound-up as he appeared or simply delighting overmuch in doing the winding.

Here, was back on the surface of Eres III. Or to be unequivocally precise, one-hundred and twenty storeys above the surface of Eres III, in the topmost office of the soaring crystalline spire that was the planet's Federal Government building.

Currently occupying said office, and doing their utmost to impersonate a particularly argumentative and disruptive group of small children, where Republic Fleet Admiral Morna Rey and entourage, Marshall Prion Vexil, supreme commander of Eres III's armed forces – plus entourage – and President Sorin Dayda, duly elected leader of Eres's civilian government, with accompanying aides.

And of course, himself, Jolee Bindo and Bastila.

All within a space slightly less than forty metres square. If either Morrigance or Hulas was still in the immediate vicinity, then as targets went this one had to be pretty damn tempting. Although getting past the several million tonnes of heavily armed capital ships still facing off with itchy trigger fingers in orbit would have been quite a trick even for them.

The person doing the shouting for order was President Dayda. Tall, blonde and hologenic, at the start of this little 'meeting' she'd borne an air of quietly self-confident calm and composure that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Jedi Master. Right now, that composure was starting to look decidedly frayed.

Her right hand – as metal as Canderous's now was, though on her the artificial arm apparently went right up to her shoulder rather than just the elbow – drummed distractedly on the surface of her desk. An extremely visible reminder of the prominent role she'd played during the resistance against the Mandalorian invasion, in some quarters it was snidely maintained that the arm was the only reason she'd ever managed to get elected.

From the way she glanced at him every now and then, an oddly contemplative look in her eyes, Tamar was certain that she'd also known him previously as Revan.

Which was an . . . interesting complication.

"Now," Dayda's voice sounded borderline tetchy at this point. "Do you think the pair of you could please back down and try to behave like adults here?"

This was directed towards Morna Rey and Marshall Vexil. The pair of them were facing up like the alpha kath hounds of two separate packs on the border of their respective territories. Over the course of the past few minutes, Tamar had formed the distinct impression that there was a long and bitterly acrimonious history somewhere here.

In fact, Morna Rey seemed to hate Vexil almost as much as she hated him.

And Bastila. And possibly the entire universe in general if surface impressions were anything to go by.

On coming face to face with Admiral Rey, any slim lingering hope Tamar had had that she might in some way be aligned with, or sympathetic to, Admiral Dodonna's way of thinking had fled instantaneously. The look in her eyes had left him wondering which of her loved ones he'd killed.

Right now, that hate shone brighter than ever. "I can see that I am wasting my time here, President. Since it now seems obvious that you have absolutely no intention of cooperating with the warrant I hold, there doesn't seem anything constructive to be achieved by talking further."

She made a short, sharp gesture to one of the officers accompanying her. "I'll leave you to the company of these traitors."

Tamar was interested to note that she seemed to include both Vexil and Bastila in with him. Indeed, as Rey turned and strode towards the exit, she paused briefly in front of Bastila. What was said was quiet, obviously intended only for her ears, but he was close enough to pick it up.

"The rest of the galaxy may be labouring under the misapprehension that you're some kind of hero, _Jedi_. I, however, know what really happened on the Star Forge. If it was down to me, you would have been executed."

From Bastila there didn't, outwardly, seem to be any kind of reaction at all. Not so much as a flinch.

Rey's attempt at a dramatic exit came up short when the office doors remained resolutely shut in front of her, barring her way.

Dayda cleared her throat. "Since we're being direct and to the point here, Admiral Rey, I thought I should repay the favour."

The tightly compressed rage Tamar sensed boiling off Rey then was intense enough to make the average Sith Lord slink away with feelings of embarrassed inadequacy. It really was extraordinary.

Dayda went on, oblivious: "You have aggressively and unapologetically violated Eres III's sovereign space. You have opened fire without provocation on Eres naval vessels and installations, and generally acted in violation of interplanetary convention and law since your arrival. Wars have been started over less. I've tried to be patient, and I've given you ample opportunity to explain your actions – which I note you have _not_ taken. On that basis, you can consider yourself under formal arrest while these acts of aggression are officially investigated."

Rey turned around with carefully measured lack of haste; let out a short, barking laugh. "Let me get this straight. You're having me _arrested_?"

"I don't think I said anything that was too difficult to understand, did I?" The snap in Dayda's voice was hard. Definitely not someone to be overawed or bullied.

"I think it's you who doesn't entirely appreciate the situation here, President." Admiral Rey actually smiled then. Inwardly, Tamar winced. "Within an hour's hyperspace jump, there are enough Republic warships waiting for my call to overpower what passes for your navy five times over. I am empowered to use any and every means available to me to ensure the capture and return of Revan as a matter of overriding urgency. If you attempt to take me into custody, I shall have no choice but call upon all of these resources to prevent such an occurrence."

There was what seemed like an _extremely_ lengthy and weighted pause.

"So, you'd casually take the Republic into another war over this, would you Admiral?" Dayda said finally as Marshal Vexil seemed to be too caught up in the act of outraged spluttering to manage to launch immediately into another verbal counterattack.

"I think you'd be better off reversing that question, don't you? Are you really willing to provoke conflict with the Republic for the sake of _him_?" A finger jabbed violently in Tamar's direction.

Vexil finally found his voice. "This is absolutely outrageous!"

"Although to be fair, I would hardly dignify what would inevitably happen as a war. A minor skirmish perhaps, at best." This time Rey's smile, directed Vexil's way, was distinctly patronising.

"Not so minor, I think." Dayda had stood up, moving around her desk and standing with her arms folded across her chest. "If the Republic is seen to be so casually violating an independent system's autonomy it would prove very awkward for it indeed. And we have treaties with a whole host of other systems, all of whom would intervene on our behalf. Personally, Admiral, I'm more than willing to gamble that – whatever authority you may have been given – the Republic Senate would be far too embarrassed by your proposed actions to do anything other than hang you out to dry."

The two of them glared at one another, neither of them backing down or giving the other so much as an inch. It was all strangely fascinating to watch.

Except he wasn't, he reminded himself, a disinterested spectator.

"So." It was Dayda's turn to smile. "I think we're starting to understand each other, but just so we're categorically clear. Jedi Revan here is an honoured guest of the people of Eres III, and has been afforded our full protection. I am, however, in the spirit of maintaining good diplomatic relations with the Republic, willing to rescind my previous arrest order and allow you to make your way directly out of system, Admiral."

Morna Rey didn't say anything, but Tamar had the impression that, had he been standing fractionally closer to her, he would have been able to hear her teeth grinding.

"Contingent, that is," Dayda continued. "On you providing us with satisfactory assurances that you will remove yourself and all Republic ships under your command so that they are no longer threatening our territory."

Which was, all things considered, taking everything more than far enough.

Steeling himself, Tamar stepped forward. "If I could just step in and say something here . . ."

"No boy, you cannot." Jolee cut him off immediately. Tamar saw President Dayda raise an eyebrow. From the quickly suppressed flicker that passed across her face he got the impression that she was amused. "Keep quiet and do as you're told.

"Now that was an extremely generous offer, Madam President," Jolee went on. "But Jedi _De'Nolo_ is already voluntarily under the Jedi's protective custody. All we seek here is safe passage to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant." Jolee turned towards Admiral Rey as he said this. "Which makes this little disagreement here all the more unnecessary. I'm sure, with a little calm negotiation, a compromise that suits us all can be reached."

To Tamar, the idea of Banthas spontaneously sprouting wings and flying in formation seemed a much more likely prospect.

"Revan will be taken into Fleet custody. The Senate's jurisdiction overrides any claim the Jedi might have."

And straight back, for about the fourth time, to that argument. _Damn it Jolee . . ._

"In your opinion, Admiral. Unfortunately, the law as I understand it does not appear to back you up. Leaving that aside, surely we both seek the same thing here though? A return to Coruscant?"

Admiral Rey snorted. "My orders say nothing about Coruscant. Revan is to be taken, initially, to a Republic processing facility on Hoth for threat assessment prior to incarceration."

Tamar felt an icy prickle run down his spine. Somehow, he suspected, incarceration wouldn't be the half of it . . .

"Hoth. Coruscant." Jolee sounded airily unconcerned. "A matter of nicety surely? Qualified success is surely far better for you, Admiral, than complete failure. We are both, after all, on the same side here."

The urge to laugh at that had to be strangled back hard. Rey didn't immediately say anything.

"And I'm afraid Hoth simply won't do at all. Too cold for an old man's bones. If you insist on that, I'll have to take President Dayda up on her kind invitation."

"Perhaps it was slightly stronger than an 'invitation'." Dayda interrupted. Both Jolee and Admiral Rey turned to look at her. "And I think I'd like to hear from . . ." a hesitation. "Jedi _De'Nolo_ here on what he personally wants to do."

And then everyone was looking straight at him.

Briefly, Tamar tried to weigh up the reasons Dayda was seemingly so willing to go, unasked, so far out on a limb for him. Personal? Political? From an entirely practical standpoint, and in the interests of protecting her home system, it surely made most sense to get him shipped out of there at the first available opportunity before washing her hands of the whole business.

He pushed the thoughts aside. "I can assure you, President, that Master Bindo has my full cooperation, absolutely voluntarily. And I do indeed want nothing more than to return to Coruscant at the earliest opportunity."

President Dayda held his gaze unflinchingly for several heartbeats, before finally lifting one eyebrow just slightly. _Your funeral. Don't say I didn't try to help you_, it seemed to say.

Admiral Rey, of course, was not about to start being compliantly accepting at this point. "You seriously think, Master Bindo, that it is a sensible idea to convey the one time Dark Lord of the Sith, who, need I remind you, is wanted for the murder of _your_ Jedi Council the last time he was there, straight to our capital and seat of government with no more than the shakiest and most tenuous of restraint?"

Jolee simply scratched his chin. "Ah, yes. Would it perhaps change your opinion at all if I could convince you that Jedi De'Nolo here had nothing whatsoever to do with that last little bit?"

-s-s-

Morrigance watched eastside docking bay four-delta – one of several hundred near identical landing pads in this quadrant of the Agatan Freight port alone – draw smoothly and steadily closer. The converted yacht, sleek and gleaming and heavily armed, was hardly typical of the traffic that the freighter port normally serviced, but she knew that no undue notice would be paid to her arrival. There were some places – even on Coruscant – where curiosity did far, far worse things than simply kill the cat.

Landing lights flashed. Unloader droids, huge and small, rumbled about their business, while in the background scores of other spacecraft – ramshackle bulk transports in the main – rose and descended continuously. She barely registered any of that.

The majority of her attention was still far, far away from here in a place of flame and searing wind that howled like a coven of maddened banshee.

He had made it off the hotel. She had received positive confirmation of that now, but deep down she had known well enough already. He wouldn't make it so . . . simple as that. Not _him_.

Her breath echoed hollowly within the confines of her mask.

His face – the impostor who wore that face – stared back at her through a barrier of transparisteel.

But he didn't matter any more. This wasn't about him.

It had never truly been about him.

_No? So tell me, why does it cut so deeply?_ It was his voice. His _old_ voice, where the soft-spoken barbs were always the ones that hooked you.

_It's not the scars I left on your flesh, is it?_

She almost laughed then, at herself. Her breathing echoed more loudly and she attempted to shove all thought of Revan aside.

Slowly, the flames began to die back. The howling faded to nothing more than a sigh.

He was gone now. This was not revenge or justice, or anything else. There was nothing to prove, and she would not allow him to distract her any longer. Besides, it was out of her hands now, already set in motion. In a way, it would be far more satisfying to see him pulled down from a distance by others like this than to participate directly.

The yacht touched down as lightly as a feather settling. She undid the clasps securing her to the seat and stood up. Celyanda silently did the same without any need to be told.

The yacht's exit ramp opened in front of her with a pneumatic hiss, curls of white steam rising from the corners into the air. She started down rapidly, boot heels clicking sharply, the note of the sound changing as she stepped onto solid oil-stained plastocrete.

Too much had been neglected in her excursion to Eres III. Too much had been left to chance.

And there was a lot that she still needed to do.

Right now there was Dustil Onasi.

-s-s-

Dustil looked up sharply at the sound of approaching footsteps.

His head span, the light beyond his cell disorienting. He'd been dozing, sleep creeping up on his blindside and taking him unawares. Since he'd been captured – hours; days; weeks ago – time had become a vague smear. And – partly through choice, partly because he hadn't been able to stop the endless self-destructively coiling turmoil of his thoughts – he hadn't slept at all during that time.

He kept thinking about Elendri, endlessly, over and over, round and round. At some point those thoughts had twisted and warped until he hated her for doing this to him. For making him feel like this.

At times he hated _everything_, starting with himself.

He'd also come to realise that being without the Force through choice and having it snatched away from him by external means were very different things. The sense of utter helplessness kept taking him back to other helpless times, after the bombing of Telos. It left him wanting to scream – fear and fury and frustration.

_Black hole of bad luck . . ._

Except now, that black hole seemed to be collapsing in upon itself, feeding on its own core. Feeding on _him_.

The footsteps didn't belong to the Mandalorian. Juggles with frag grenades, or whatever the frak had left him like that. Something inside Dustil sank. He could feel his hands shaking like those of a glitterstim addict too far removed from his last fix. He couldn't make them stop.

Instead, it was their leader. Rath. To start with, Dustil had found it difficult to fathom how a man like that could be in the command of the others he'd seen.

And walking behind him, a glowering shadow, was that sadistic bastard of a Trandoshan. An involuntary spasm passed through Dustil's body, the side of his ribcage aching sharply. His hands clenched into fists at his side.

The Trandoshan seemed to be grinning at him.

"Time to go."

It took Dustil a couple of heartbeats to digest those words; to understand what they meant. Even when the forcefield cutting him off from the rest of the ship – the rest of the universe – dropped he didn't immediately grasp it.

Instinct took over. Sith-honed instinct.

Barely thinking, he launched himself straight at Rath's throat.

Unfortunately, sleep-deprived reflexes failed entirely to match up to intent. He had a fleeting impression of Shakrill starting to move in the periphery of his vision, before he hit the back wall of the makeshift cell with a clearly audible crunch. He slid to the floor with boneless lack of grace.

Gasping hard, straining to draw air into lungs that felt like they were being constricted by red-hot iron bands, Dustil attempted to rise. Something impacted with his mouth hard enough to numb his entire face and he dropped hard, vision redding out.

"Enough! He's supposed to be delivered unharmed!"

_Delivered?_

Something landed on the floor beside him with a heavy metallic _thunk_. His vision cleared slightly, though he could still see the blood vessels in his own eyes superimposed over everything else. Rath was standing over him, his expression one of vaguely affronted distaste.

Coughing, lungs burning, Dustil spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.

"Put those on, please. If you've finished acting like an idiot."

'Those' were a pair of heavy and extremely solid looking magna-lock cuffs. Dustil eyed them unenthusiastically, making no immediate move to pick them up.

"You can put them on voluntarily, or Shakrill can put them on for you." Rath sounded disinterested. "And you've just experienced exactly how gentle he can be."

Stifling a groan, Dustil reluctantly did as he was told before struggling to his feet. The ship seemed to sway beneath him as if they were now airborne and experiencing light turbulence. There was a high, thin, perpetual whining note playing in his ears.

"Now please, after you. I don't particularly want to be late."

Glowering sullenly, Dustil moved in the indicated direction. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth. His lips felt like they had swollen to several times their normal size. "Where are we going?" It came out all mushy and blurred, as if he was trying to speak through a mouthful of cotton wool.

Rath didn't answer. As they walked through the _Corvine_ – the _Ebon Hawk_ – towards the exit, Dustil noticed Kreed, or at least, the red glow from his artificial eye, watching him from the shadows.

_Wait, wait. I need to . . .. _Shakrill nudged him less than gently in the back, forcing him onwards.

They paused, waiting for the exit ramp to descend in front of them. Dustil tried again: "I said . . ."

"I heard what you said. I chose to ignore you." Nevertheless, a moment later Rath continued. "Amazingly enough, someone is willing to pay me for the dubious pleasures of your company." Then. "I know. I'm as amazed as you must be?"

"Who?" But inwardly, Dustil thought he knew already. His heart began to race.

"You'll see soon enough. Now, can we get a move on please?"

-s-s-

Yolanda listened to the quiet trilling on the end of the comm. line. She'd been listening to it for over a minute now. No one had answered. Part of her knew that no one was going to answer.

Finally, reluctantly, she gave up. It felt like there was a pressure spot behind her eyes and it was attempting to bore its way directly into her brain. The urge to hit something – anything – was strong.

That was the fourth and last of the main contact numbers she'd tried. The first three had yielded exactly the same results as this. No excuse or innocent explanation she could come up with satisfactorily explained all of them becoming indisposed at the same time.

And the tail she'd supposedly set on the Catcher seemed to have vanished without a trace.

Which, in her mind, all pointed unerringly to one thing. He'd screwed up. The arrogant bastard had ignored her warnings and got cocky. Tried to be flash. Tried to do too much, because hey, _I was a Jedi hunter, elite of the elite, and I know better_. And the Catcher had caught him.

And because the Catcher had caught him, this entire corner of the network had come crashing down.

Her hand came up; raked through her hair – short-cropped and non-descript brown currently; as close to its natural state as it got. Inwardly she told herself not to succumb to paranoia; to leap to unwarranted conclusions before she had any firm evidence.

A glance down at her chronometer. Twenty minutes.

Twenty fraking minutes. How long, exactly, did it take to greet an old friend anyway?

Hadn't _he_ been the one in such a dementedly reckless hurry to go haring after his son anyway?

She swore loudly enough to attract an odd look from a Zabrak Jedi Knight apparently taking a meditative stroll through the Jedi Temple's formal gardens. Their gaze met briefly. He was the first to look away.

For a moment, she thought about just upping and leaving. Damn the fact that she'd been ordered to stick with Carth. She'd also been ordered to keep the Catcher occupied, when it came to it.

_And she'd certainly succeeded in doing that, hadn't she?_ She smiled bitterly.

Like that, she came to a decision – started walking. This whole damn place managed to give her the creeps somehow, as if it was in some way removed from the surrounding of the universe. Over everything else, she wanted to be the hell away from it.

It was as good an excuse as any.

"Yolanda!" Carth's voice called out from behind her.

After a slight hesitation, she stopped. Closed her eyes.

-s-s-

"Anyone can fake a hologram."

Tamar was dryly amused to hear his own words of earlier on echoed almost exactly by Morna Rey as the image of Morrigance flickered out. He glanced across at Jolee; raised an eyebrow and didn't do a very good job of concealing a smirk. _Well, old man. You're in charge here. You explain to her . . ._

He didn't miss the evil return look he got. Which was quickly replaced by full on charm directed in Admiral Rey's direction. Tamar suspected that Jolee would have had better results trying that charm directly on her flagship.

"Admiral, you have my personal assurance as a Jedi Master that it is entirely genuine. I witnessed the conversion you've just seen personally, and can testify to the hologram's veracity."

"And of course, Jedi have never been known to . . . interpret the truth creatively when it suits them."

_Hah. Got you there, old man_.

Jolee simply smiled blandly at her. "Is there really that much scope for creative interpretation of anything I've said to you, Admiral? I'm perfectly happy to hand over a copy of the hologram for full forensic analysis if you truly have doubts over its authenticity."

But of course, Tamar, thought, whether or not he had had anything to do with assassinating the Jedi Council was of precisely zero interest to Morna Rey – and by extension, the Republic in general. Jolee knew that. Everyone in the whole damn room probably knew it; even Bastila if she was willing to be honest with herself. It was the past that mattered here. Not his nominal guilt or innocence over present day crimes.

"This changes nothing." Morna Rey's expression was closed, more or less confirming his assessment.

"I agree." If anything, Jolee's smile broadened. "It certainly doesn't change the fact that, whatever your orders may be, Admiral, Jedi Knight Tamar De'Nolo remains in _my_ custody."

Rey sniffed contemptuously. But even that much seemed to count almost as a concession given her previous stance.

Jolee went on. "I would of course eagerly accept your escort as we return to Coruscant. I'm sure all of us would feel much, much safer that way."

Tamar thought he heard a quiet intake of breath from Bastila. Rey herself didn't seem to react at all. Outwardly anyway. Which, again, almost managed to seem like a tacit acceptance from her

The offer made a kind of sense, he supposed. If it had been either Hulas or Morrigance – as seemed likely – who had tipped Admiral Rey off to his presence here on Eres III, then it made it that bit more problematic for either of them to make any further attempts to get at them if Rey was actually accompanying them. But, looking at Rey's expression, it still seemed very much like a matter of getting into bed with a slightly different species of poisonous snake.

And as soon as they were safely outside the protection of Eres III's space . . ..

"And how much safer again will we all feel if I send Marshall Vexil to accompany you on your way as well?" President Dayda interrupted. "Just as further insurance against any mishaps, you understand."

Jolee looked round at her. He blinked in what Tamar assumed was feigned surprise, since it certainly didn't come under his normal range of expressions. "Now that is a very kind offer, President. But really, I wouldn't want to put you to any more trouble than we already regrettably have . . .."

"Did I give you the impression that was an offer, Master Bindo? Because it wasn't. I'm afraid I'm going to have insist here. Anyone who cares to debate the matter can do so at length from their cell while they wait for charges to be brought over the farrago that took place in orbit."

"Well . . . put like that, it would indeed seem churlish of an old man to refuse."

_Which is of course what you were fishing for all along, you cunning old . . .._ A certain amount of rueful admiration accompanied the thought.

"And if that's all settled . . .?" President Dayda looked to Admiral Rey particularly then, but the Admiral seemed to be too busy looking Vexil's and didn't say anything.

The lack of reaction from her in general made Tamar feel suddenly very, very uneasy indeed.

"Then I would ask you all to leave and allow me to return my attention to more pressing matters of state. I think quite enough time has been wasted on this already."

"Of course, Madam President." Jolee inclined his head. "You have my apologies that events dictated you ever needed to become involved." Then, towards Tamar and Bastila. "Do come along, _children_."

Tamar had nearly reached the door when President Dayda spoke again.

"No. Not you, Jedi . . . De'Nolo. You, I'd like to speak to a moment longer. In private."

He looked back at her slowly. "Of course." It wouldn't have been entirely true to say that he was surprised by this, but his wariness levels ramped up several notches.

It took several minutes for Dayda to persuade her aides that private meant minus them too. Eventually she all but yelled at them: "Look, if this is Darth Revan, he could have killed everyone in here already without breaking a sweat. The fact that he hasn't suggests he isn't going to."

When they were finally alone, an uncomfortable silence hung on the air, reminiscent of the toxic smoke given off by the xoxin plains.

"I'm assuming here, President, that you knew me once," he said finally.

She appeared to be studying him – a fascinated curiosity that she wasn't quite able to conceal. Her lips twitched near imperceptibly. "You know, I had assumed – like most of the rest of the galaxy – that the Jedi were simply creating a convenient fiction in regard to the extent of your injuries."

"Nobody trusts us much any more, do they?" He let out a rueful exhalation. "The Jedi, I mean."

"And you are surprised by that?" Dayda shook her head, dismissing the Jedi as a subject. "I was watching you through the entire meeting. You noticed the fact I recognised you, I think, but there's no actual _recognition_, is there? You don't remember me at all."

Tamar hesitated. "I don't remember _anything_ much, and what bit I do remember is not mine to control. If Malak hadn't forced me to recognise the truth, I think I would have gone on living the fiction quite happily."

"Malak." She looked away from him briefly. "How much did it hurt you to cut him down?"

"I . . ." He trailed off, unable to answer, astonished not so much by the question but that she be the one to ask it. "How _well_ did I know you?"

She shrugged, a hint of colour flaring to her cheeks, the politician's façade fracturing. "Not quite that well, I assure you."

He didn't say anything – wasn't sure what the appropriate response was here.

"Though believe me, that wasn't through the lack of a quite embarrassing amount of trying on my part. To be honest, I should be _very_ grateful you don't have any memories here." A half-laugh. "You were either far too noble, or didn't find me attractive enough. One of the two."

"I'm sure that last part can't be true."

One corner of her mouth turned up. "_He_ had a way with words too."

"Really?" This was getting very uncomfortable now, especially given their respective positions here. "_I _can't seem to stop putting my foot in my mouth."

There was a lengthy and somewhat embarrassed pause.

"And then, of course, I lost my arm and we won the war. Or the battle – of course, that's what it was to you. Just one of many. And you left. All those other worlds in need of saving."

Their eyes met again, and this time there was something sharp and unforgiving in her eyes. "There were times, even up to the point where you . . . died that I wondered if that's what you were still doing. Trying to save everyone in your own particular, remorseless way."

He breathed out. "That excuse doesn't work. There is no possible set of circumstances where that excuse can _ever _work." No excuse of any kind could ever work at all.

She was back in studying mode, almost clinical. "Don't get me wrong. I wasn't using it to excuse you. Deciding that we needed to be saved. Deciding that you knew best, and would see it through no matter the consequences. There's no sin quite like that kind of pride, is there? Knowing the universe's will, or assuming that you do."

Another pause, then: "Of course, standing next to you, it was easy to believe that you shared the universe's secrets. I don't think even you realised quite how willing people were to follow you pretty much _anywhere_."

Tamar hesitated. "President . . ."

"Sorin, since we're so familiar." That same twist to her lips again.

He decided to leave off name and title altogether. "I don't think, somehow, that you asked me to stay behind to reminisce with a man whose memories resemble so much scrambled clawk egg."

"Not entirely, no."

But she didn't immediately elaborate. "And it seems to me you're taking quite a risk, going out of your way for me. Surely it would have been much more in Eres's interests to let Admiral Rey have me without all this . . . fuss."

She snorted. "And that's where you're wrong, isn't it. The consequences of me letting the Republic trample all over our independent status the first moment it becomes convenient for them to do so would have been much, much more damaging for us in the long term." The look in her eyes became almost contemplative. "Once, you would have understood that implicitly."

He made a noncommittal noise.

"So, Revan. Sorry, the new name just doesn't seem to fit in my head." She didn't sound at all sorry though. "Do you _really_ want to go to Coruscant?"

"Want is perhaps too . . . enthusiastic a word. But yes, in essence."

Dayda snorted a second time, seemingly exasperated and turned away, walking back round behind the broad expanse of her desk. "Why?"

"You saw the hologram."

She still wasn't looking at him. "Not guilt then?"

The question took him slightly by surprise, but he just shrugged. "I disabused myself of the notion that dying would help anyone but myself. Yes, there's guilt. But frak that. It doesn't make any of it better."

"Really?" She looked up, eyebrow raised enquiringly.

"Really." _Really?_

"Well then." She folded her arms across her chest. "In that case, I shouldn't keep you from your . . . friends. Is that right? Are they friends?"

"Oh yes. They're friends."

Dayda nodded. She almost seemed surprised by the emphaticness of his response.

He turned away from her, heading for the door. Inwardly he was quite relieved that it was over and hadn't turned out to be anything worse than that. What lay ahead though . . .

"Oh, and one more thing."

Tamar stopped; looked back at her.

"Stop trying to save the galaxy, Revan. I think the galaxy can cope."

-s-s-

It had been a good day, the Catcher reflected. Much had been achieved. A difficult trail had been drawn out to the surface and followed successfully. Here it ended.

One way or another.

The heavy freight door directly opposite him clanked once, then opened with a whirr of concealed machinery. Three figures stepped through it.

He'd been able to sense _their_ approach for several minutes now, so it didn't come remotely as a surprise.

In total, he'd been standing there, on the landing bay's periphery, for almost an hour, watching. Waiting patiently. No one had noticed him. Not even the Defels, who were very good indeed at noticing things.

When it suited him, the Catcher could be _extremely_ hard to spot.

These three though – these three saw him straight away. He felt the quiet flows of misdirection he was weaving break down almost instantly, stripped down and prised apart by someone who knew exactly what to look for.

But then, it would have been ever so slightly disappointing to have it any other way.

The three figures stopped abruptly, staring collectively right at him.

Across the landing bay there was some activity from the ship. That strange ship, which looked on the surface like a standard stock freighter, but was somehow at the same time a gaping sinkhole in which the Force did not appear to exist. From the sound, its main boarding ramp was being lowered.

None of the four of them looked around.

In the circumstances, allowing oneself to be distracted even slightly would have proved . . . imprudent. But if that really _was_ Dustil Onasi, then the Catcher's day was about to become very much more than good.

"You." The voice, cold and emotionlessly female, was identical to the one that he had teased free of the Jedi killer's head.

The Catcher smiled warmly in greeting.

Morrigance's mask reflected it right back at him.


	21. Zero Point

**21. Zero Point**

"_And back to our main breaking news story. Newly appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Ranthi Vule, has announced that trial proceedings are to be initiated against one Tamar De'Nolo – the Jedi formerly known as Xavious Revan – in regard to the alleged murder of twelve members of the Jedi Council on . . ._"

Briefly, the background noise of music and raucous laughter rose up to drown out the holo-feed before dying back again a few seconds later.

"_In the studio with us right now to discuss the implications of this, among other issues, is renowned legal expert, Professor Crochetan Veggs. Professor Veggs, this surely has to count as one of the more dramatic openings to a new Chief Justice's tenure in recent times. To remind our viewers, Judge Vule's predecessor, Eccol Ikaasa, was recently found dead in circumstances that have yet to be fully explained, prompting what almost everyone agrees is a surprising promotion."_

"_Well, Vlob, if I might first say what a pleasure it is . . ."_

"Terrol hon, this is boring. Can't we change the channel?" The voice was female, with a definite undertone of whiny and rather shrill boredom – accent straight out of the depths of the lower tunnels. "We've been watching this poodoo for, like, hours. And _Alderaanian Sunsets_ is just starting. You know that's my favourite . . ."

Somewhere in the background came a snort of barely-suppressed laughter.

"No, we can't, Charise." The response was short; abrupt. "Now keep quiet. I'm trying to listen."

-s-s-

The music was pitched at that perfect level. Loud enough to cover the buzz of conversation and prevent casual eavesdropping between adjacent tables. Quiet enough that that conversation still remained both possible and comfortable. The Bith band doing the playing were good – astonishingly good considering where they were, deep in the lower levels, and the general derelict squalor of the surrounding area.

And when you breathed in, you didn't break down coughing from smoke or body-odour. That in itself spoke volumes.

Even the décor was vaguely . . . _nice_, particularly when contrasted with the shuddering purple horrors of Davik Kang and his ilk. Someone here obviously had pretensions of class. And on top of those pretensions, there were actually glimmerings of taste showing through. Carth had definitely been in worse establishments.

In recent times, he'd barely been in better.

He glanced across at Yolanda, striding alongside him, moving as if she was wearing an entirely different person as a skin. Close at hand, the degree and depth of the transformation was quite eerie. Posture, body language, everything. This version of her slinked and slithered like a poisonous serpent; exuded subtle menace.

_Let me handle this_, she'd ordered earlier. _We want information. We don't want to start a war trying to get it_.

He'd argued of course, though in the end he hadn't quite been sure why. Rationally, she _was_ much better at this than he was. Perhaps it was just that it felt like he was relinquishing Dustil's safety into her hands. And for all they'd been through together, he wasn't ready to do that.

A waitress, Zeltron – needless to say, highly attractive – flashed dazzling white teeth in a manufactured smile as she moved effortlessly to meet and greet them. She gravitated straight to Yolanda, her gaze passing quickly over Carth, evaluating his role as bodyguard, and dismissing him.

Since the hair-loss, he'd noticed that people, and women especially, treated him subtly differently from before. _Losing your looks in your old age._

Pleasantries were exchanged. A token of some kind was passed, and briefly, the Zeltron's smile faltered. Carth thought he saw something like fear in her eyes, and felt his own unease wind tighter inside his chest.

The name Chan was mentioned, and after a moment's hesitation, the Zeltron gestured for them to follow her. All of a sudden, she wasn't the slightest bit happy, and in Zeltrons, mood carried over to everyone around them.

They wended their way towards the private rooms round the back of cantina. "Wait here," the waitress told them, before disappearing inside the nearest.

As the seconds ticked by, Carth could feel his palms itching, the urge to reach for the blasters beneath his jacket growing stronger by the moment. He tried to convince himself that this was normal. That they hadn't blown it already.

"Keep calm and in control." The words, barely audible, made him jolt. Yolanda hadn't even looked round at him. "We're being watched. Don't overreact. In fact, don't react full stop."

His teeth clicked. _Fine_.

Juhani's earlier question came back. It had left him stymied. _Who is she?_

Because, who was she? It was chastening to realise that, for all the time they'd spent together – for all they'd done together – he didn't actually know in any meaningful way. _Someone I slept with. _Impossible to deny that.

_Someone I trust?_

That bit was harder, especially concerning this.

After all that had happened, he _should_ trust her. Despite her outward cynicism, she'd gone out of her way time and again. It seemed an unbelievable ingratitude to even question.

Juhani herself, he reminded himself, was around somewhere – possibly quite close – covering their backs and making sure an escape route remained open, should it prove necessary. It _was_ a reassurance. Somehow, though, it just wasn't quite enough of a reassurance.

Yolanda and Juhani had not exactly become fast friends on initial meeting. Coolly cordial was about the best you could describe it.

_Despite what you may have heard about my kind, I am not incapable of stealth and discretion_, Juhani had answered Yolanda's look before the question had even been asked.

_I assure you, I wasn't making any judgment on you being a Cathar_.

_No, but you were making judgments on me being a Jedi._

The waitress returned. Her violet skin looked pale.

"Mr. Chan will see you."

"Of course he will," Yolanda purred. Something about her tone of voice made Carth's flesh creep. It was, on several levels, damn scary.

They followed the waitress closely.

_I won't be party to a slaughter, Carth. I know that you feel exactly the same way, and I don't need to say this._

Juhani again, earlier. He'd bitten back an angry denial as he'd realised that kind of anger was exactly what she was warning him about. But there was still a part of him that didn't know quite what he would and wouldn't do in order to find his son.

_I _don't _need to say this, right?_ she'd pressed him when no immediate response was forthcoming.

_Right,_ he'd eventually forced out.

The sound of the music, and the general background hum of conversation, faded as they stepped inside. Within the private room, the lighting was so dim that it took Carth's eyes a few seconds to properly adjust to it. In the corner, a holo-feed of a news channel was playing. He ignored it, concentrating on the room's occupants.

There were four of them, counting the utility droid in the corner. After making T3's acquaintance, Carth would never discount a utility droid again.

Seated on the mem-foam couch in the centre of the room was a man that Carth assumed must be Chan; tall, angular, dark-haired, expensively dressed, his eyes hidden behind huge black bug-eye shades that made it impossible to tell where he was actually looking. He seemed to be staring at the holo-feed, not paying their arrival any mind at all.

Next to him, body language and facial expression both strongly suggesting that they'd walked in on the middle of an argument, was a statuesque looking woman with bright pink hair and clothing that served more to adorn than actually cover anything. She shot Carth a brief, sulky look before tossing her head back and folding her arms tightly across a more than ample chest.

It was the third individual that caused Carth to break stride, though.

You didn't get to see an Iridorian berserker outside of their battle armour every day, especially not on Coruscant. But the elaborate facial tattoos, serried lines of rank scars, and scrimshawed bone braided into his hair were impossible to mistake for anything else. If Carth remembered correctly, each piece of bone was carved from the body of an honourable enemy bested in combat.

This one had obviously bested a _lot_ of enemies. As he shifted, unblinking, in his seat, his hair rattled dryly.

"You don't have an appointment." Chan still seemed to have his attention firmly locked on the news feed. Carth blocked the background droning out. "And even if you are who you imply you are, you don't just walk into the middle of my _house_ and interrupt me outside of business hours."

"Then I'm sure you'll be grateful if we keep this quick and simple, Mr. Chan," Yolanda drawled. "Much less of an interruption, treated that way."

If Chan even heard her, he gave no sign. Those black insect-eye lenses swivelled round, straight past Yolanda to fix on Carth. "But you're not who you imply, are you?"

_Frak._

"If you were who you want me to think you are, then you'd hardly have Captain Carth Onasi of the Republic Fleet here, pretending to be your bodyguard."

_And double frak_.

The woman sitting next to Chan suddenly appeared to become _much_ more interested in proceedings, staring at him openly. She leant forward, fluttering her eyelashes and smiling in a manner that made him wince inwardly. Since the Star Forge, he hadn't exactly been short of offers from women seeking to 'comfort' the famous, widowed war hero. Marriage proposals had been thrown away by the sack load, and that was just for starters.

"Captain, you surely didn't think some extreme hairdressing would be enough to disguise who you were, did you?" Chan smiled, the expression not altogether pleasant.

"You used to have really nice hair," the woman commented, apropos to nothing. "I don't know why you cut it off."

There was a pronounced pause.

"What?" the woman asked as she realised everyone was staring at her. Her voice had a nail down a blackboard quality. Then she smiled at Carth again. "Not that bald is bad on you, or anything, hon. In fact, I've heard good things about bald men . . ."

Chan exhaled. "I think, Charise, that you should leave us. We wouldn't want to bore you with our discussions."

"That's okay, Rolly. I'm not the least bit bored." There was something defiant in her voice and she folded her arms again, thrusting her chin out.

Carth almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of it.

"_Now_."

Charise shot Chan a poisonous look, standing up with an indolent flick of her head. "Come on T4. I can tell when we're not wanted. Let's leave the boys here to their . . . _fun_."

The droid let out a low whistling note, but trundled obediently after her anyway. As she walked past Carth, she brushed up against him, leaving behind a cloud of perfume strong enough to constitute a low-grade biological weapon's attack.

When she was finally gone, Yolanda cleared her throat. "So, Mr Chan. Why exactly do you think my . . . _associate_ being who he is alters anything about who I am? I'm curious as to your logic."

The tension in the air was palpable. Carth couldn't help but glance briefly behind him, his back feeling hopelessly exposed.

"I hardly think the esteemed Captain here would choose to associate himself with a cabal of semi-mythical assassins." Chan smiled thinly, pressing his fingertips together and sitting back almost casually. "Easy to claim something that cannot be either proved or disproved."

Carth decided, abruptly, to ignore Yolanda's earlier advice. This obviously wasn't working. "If you know who I am, you know what kind of back-up I can bring. Me, I'd be a lot more worried in your position, knowing what I know."

The smile on Chan's lips vanished instantly. "The two of you were watched the entire way here. You have no back-up worth speaking of, so please, leave off with the threats. Since I don't particularly want to get bloodstains on my carpet if I can avoid it, I'll extend you both a one-time offer. Walk away now, and you won't be hindered."

Carth dropped any vague remaining pretence. "I'd be happy to take you up on that. Just as soon as I find out where my son is. Which you are going to tell me." Beside him, he heard Yolanda's exhale in apparent exasperation. He didn't care.

After a second or so, the corner of Chan's mouth twitched. "I assume, Captain, that you are under the impression that this son of yours is one of my clients. For the sake of politeness, I should inform you that my business is predicated on complete confidentiality. I release details of business transactions to absolutely no one. No exceptions." Chan nodded in the direction of the news feed holo that was still playing, unnoticed. "Not even for the Dark Lord Revan himself. Now, the door? Directly behind you."

Carth just kept on looking at him – those blank, glossy black shades. "I wasn't aware I phrased it as a request."

Chan sighed extravagantly, then snapped his fingers. "Dromon, I'm sure you'd like a piece of genuine Republic war hero braided in your hair."

'Dromon' said nothing; unhurriedly stood up. He was bigger than he'd appeared sitting down. A _lot_ bigger.

Carth readied himself to go for his blasters. _So this is going well._

And finally, as the silence lengthened, some of what the news feed was saying penetrated.

"_Lastly, Professor Veggs, what does the timing of this announcement say to you?"_

"_Well, Vlob, that is – I have to say – one of things that I find most curious about all this. Just as the Revan issue was finally starting to slide down the news agenda and now . . . well, here we are. The logic of the decision does escape me slightly, and I hardly think Judge Vule would have wanted to start his tenure with such a controversial announcement as this. From the outside it can't help but look like a tacit admission that, for all the propaganda being put around about being fully in control of the situation, the relevant authorities are no closer to actually taking Revan into custody now than they were at the outset._

"_Unless the hope is to provoke Revan into surfacing, I can't see much coming of it, I'm afraid. Show trials rarely have their intended effect. One thing's for certain here though, Vlob: there are political machinations taking place that we're only now beginning to see the surface of."_

-s-s-

Morrigance stared at the Catcher's face. That smile, still familiar: it was hardly something that you were likely to forget.

She was also well aware of Rath and his pet Trandoshan's growing impatience as they waited at the bottom of the Ebon Hawk's boarding ramp. Between them, wearing stun cuffs, Dustil Onasi looked like he was trying to will himself into invisibility. They were all still within the null-Force bubble projected by Rath's ysalamari, and consequently seemed slightly unreal, like holographic projections instead of real people.

"Naemon," she greeted quietly. "How nice to see you. Sadly, your timing is particularly inopportune. I have pressing business to attend to."

Loaders clanked in the background, mingling with the constant roar of freighters landing and taking off. The Catcher's smile widened. She could sense the Force doing very peculiar things around him. Of course, he'd always been rather odd in that regard, but in the years since they'd last been in face to face contact, the strangeness seemed to have increased exponentially.

"Elleste." His voice caressed the name almost lovingly, his head tilting – slightly quizzical – to one side. "That was you, wasn't it? The Hutt's oh so promising and talented new apprentice." Suddenly he laughed, loud enough to be heard right across the landing bay over the background din. "I have to confess that I never bothered paying much attention to Auza and his court. So tediously banal, I thought. I see now that might have been an error on my part."

"Trust me, it wasn't."

He raised an eyebrow and she thought he was amused. "But regardless," he continued, "I am quite _utterly_ delighted to find out that the reports of your demise are so clearly exaggerated."

And, she reflected, unlike virtually any other Sith voicing those particular sentiments, he was probably completely and honestly sincere in what he said.

Of course, the Catcher had never truly been Sith in anything other than the loosest of senses. Or perhaps, a stray thought obliquely added, he was one of those rare _true_ Sith among their number, pursuing the creed of passion and individualism to its ultimate extremes rather than simply paying lip service to it.

Certainly, he had never been a proper part of the Sith machine as most understood it. That had just provided him with a convenient cloak, affording him the opportunity to pursue his particular brand of special interests without overly interfering, or asking awkward questions. In payment, he tolerated the occasional demands placed upon his time.

Darth Auza would probably have been rather surprised to find out quite how . . . _casually_ the Catcher had viewed their working relationship.

His eyes, as she looked at them, suddenly seemed to be trying to suck her in. Once, when Revan's covert and intelligence networks had been under control, she'd theoretically been Naemon's direct superior. His Master, even, to use proper Sith nomenclature. Of course, she'd quickly found that as theories went, this one was – at best – downright dubious.

Now such an assumption would be tantamount to suicide.

She pulled her gaze away from him, feeling slightly shaky, and turned her focus back to Rath and his hostage. "I understand that you seek the boy's father. You're welcome to him. I won't try to interfere. But here, right now, Dustil Onasi is _mine_. Do you understand me, Naemon?"

There was a pause that seemed to go on for far too long. "I understand your words quite precisely, Lady Fel. Unlike some, you have always been most exact and lucid in your communications."

Which was entirely not the same as saying that he agreed to what she said, or would cooperate. Behind the mask, her teeth gritted together tightly. But she didn't bother to argue.

One thing she did know. You didn't argue with the Catcher.

Not successfully, at any rate. His version of sanity appeared to reference an entirely different mode of reality to the one every one else inhabited. And within that reality, nothing that anyone else had to say held more than curiosity value.

"I don't have time for any further discussions on the matter," she told him. "I'm sure Celyanda will be only too happy to keep you 'entertained' in my absence." With that, she strode past him. She didn't look back.

How Celyanda would choose to interpret 'entertain', she had no real idea, though the twins usually had an eerie knack of picking up very clearly on her underlying intent even when she wasn't fully aware of it herself.

In that case, the next few moments might very well involve the use of lightsabers and casual and brutal dismemberment as a conversational opener.

It was something to hope for, at least.

-s-s-

Dustil watched Morrigance's approach with a mixture of equal parts fury, resignation, and something very close to terror. _What the frak have I ever done to you, bitch? Why can't you just stay the hell away from me?_

If he'd thought that he'd have gotten more than half a dozen paces, he would have made a run for it. Except the combination of stun cuffs and Force blindness was enough to convince even him of that action's futility. The throbbing still emanating from his jaw also acted as a very pointed reminder.

She stopped, still about half a dozen metres in front of them. The part of Dustil still capable of being rational about anything noted that she was about the same distance from the _Hawk_ as he had been when he'd first encountered the Defel and stepped back. Whereupon the Force had vanished.

So if he could somehow make it that far . . .

"Your pardon if I don't come any closer, Rath. In the circumstances, I'd prefer to retain all my wits about me."

Hearing her voice was enough to forge fear into furious white-hot hatred. _If you've done anything to Elendri . . ._

_Then what, Sithboy?_

The whisper in his head was taunting. He clenched his teeth, which made his jaw ache all the more.

Rath advanced to meet her half way. The Trandoshan clamped a hand down painfully on Dustil's shoulder to show that he wasn't meant to follow.

As Dustil watched, Rath nodded in the direction of the three figures still standing near one of the landing bay's freight doors. "A problem?"

"A potential complication, certainly." Morrigance's voice – the blankness of it – made Dustil shiver. "Though that is something solely for me to worry about."

Rath made a noncommittal noise.

"That said, I'd advise you to leave here as soon as our business is concluded. Simply as a precaution."

There was an obvious hesitation on Rath's part, "I'll take that under advisement."

"I'd recommend you do slightly more than that, old friend." That last word seemed to take on a peculiar resonance. "But . . . your decision entirely of course. Anyway, I trust we still go ahead as discussed?"

Rath was seemingly still looking past her as much as at her. Belatedly, Dustil saw him nod.

Morrigance held a small, slim black case in one hand. She now extended this towards Rath. "I hope that this will be sufficient to cover _all_ of the business we have together."

Another noticeable pause followed. Finally, Rath took it from her grasp and opened it.

From his body language – the immediate change in the set of his shoulders – Dustil suspected strongly that something was amiss. The Trandoshan's grip on his shoulder tightened to the extent that it induced an involuntary gasp.

"This is not the sum we agreed upon," Rath said, voice tight.

"You have cause for complaint?"

Dustil was suddenly very aware that, as the rope being pulled both ways from the middle here, he was undoubtedly going to be the first casualty should the nerf-crap hit the fan. As thoughts went, it definitely helped to focus the mind.

"I . . ." Rath trailed off. He seemed uncertain of how to respond to her. "Let's just say that I have cause for _curiosity_."

Morrigance didn't physically shrug, but something about her attitude suggested it to Dustil nevertheless. "I understand that you suffered losses in the course of your work."

Rath nodded once. "Theda." His voice sounded . . . odd. "Three of the Brothers."

"I won't pretend that credits in any way cover for the deaths of your colleagues. It should, however, compensate you for the expenses you've incurred."

The tightness in Rath's shoulders was back. "I don't expect to be paid for uncompleted work."

"Funny. I thought it was standard practise for an employer to cover expenses, regardless of outcome."

"For contracted work," Rath agreed. "This was a bounty, which is an altogether different thing."

"I consider us to have had a verbal contract, which I am now releasing you from. I can be fairly certain when I say that the main bounty is no longer on the table."

To Dustil's eyes, Rath did not look at all happy about this.

He almost smiled: _hah, you bastard, you're being fired._ Despite failing to understand well over half of what had passed between the two of them, that much was loud and clear. It was a polite firing, perhaps, but a firing nevertheless.

"I had not heard anything to that effect." Rath's words were stilted. "And I like to think of myself as a good listener."

"Then take this as an advance tip-off. I hope I am to be regarded as a reliable source?"

Eventually Rath nodded, although it seemed rather grudging.

"We can't get the past back, Rath," she said quietly, barely loud enough to carry to Dustil's ears. "And I think both of us are very, very different people from back then. You now have Revan's ship, which I think has to qualify as a victory of a sort."

Rath grunted. "I consider it a barely adequate replacement for the _Shadow Dancer_, but . . . there is scope for improvement, I suppose. If that concludes everything?" Suddenly he sounded frosty. "I should warn you that as soon as the boy leaves the ysalamari's sphere of influence he may choose to become . . . troublesome."

_Frak right I will . . .._

But the thought trailed off with near terminal abruptness as he realised that Morrigance was now looking directly at him. The image of her ruined face played in his mind's eye, superimposing itself over the reflective surface of her mask.

"Oh, I'm sure myself and Dustil will be able to work everything out between ourselves sensibly."

Before Dustil could put voice to any kind of denial, Rath had turned around. Shakrill gave him a hard shove in the back, sending him stumbling towards Morrigance. Then the pair of mercenaries were walking up the _Ebon Hawk's_ ramp, leaving him alone with her.

For one crystal clear instant, there was an almost irresistible urge to turn around and beg to be taken back.

-s-s-

In the dim light, the sheen of sweat on Yuthura's skin looked almost phosphorescent. She rolled off the bed they shared, standing up lithely. Tamar's breath was still coming hard as he watched her – the unconscious little motions of the tips of her head tails speaking silently of her agitation.

He felt that same agitation too. Eight hours. Eight hours left.

It was sand running through his fingers, impossible to catch. Impossible to slow. Impossible to stop.

The knowledge of that inevitability loomed over them both inescapably, and it overflowed into everything else, tainting and twisting. There had been a desperation bordering on aggression about their coupling – it hadn't so much been lovemaking as a mutual act of angry denial and defiance.

He shifted onto his side, bruised and aching. His shoulder stung where the skin had been broken. This was supposed to have been a conversation; a last chance to say what needed to be said after not having the time to properly talk at all during the past few days.

Except, so far, barely a single word had been exchanged.

And that sand kept on trickling away.

He watched as she seated herself cross-legged, almost as if trying to meditate – to find some measure of calm and serenity amidst the chaos.

All of what he had to say, in essence, boiled down into three short sentences. _I love you. I wish that this could work out differently. _

_It can't._

He had at least managed the first of those.

"Why?" At the sound of her voice, the silence shattered into splintered fragments.

_Why?_ He didn't ask her what she meant. He didn't need to.

She didn't look at him. Her headtails hung motionless down her back as she continued. "You have the recording. Why do you imagine that anyone will find it any more convincing if you present it to them in person? Are you really naïve enough to believe that you'll even be allowed to make your case?"

Tamar didn't answer right away. The way the soft light silvered her seated form made something inside ache with poignancy. After a moment just looking at her, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. The carefully regulated airflow in the cabin – once one of Seboba's guest suites – was cool against his chest.

One hand came up briefly to rub at his eyes. "If I'm there in person, I can make myself . . . difficult to dismiss." He sighed. The words sounded hollow even to him. "Even if I can't, if I'm standing right there in front of everyone, my absence can no longer be used as a distraction or an excuse for not seeing what's going on right beneath their noses."

He heard her snort; saw a tiny little shiver pass the length of her spine. "Flawed reasoning, and you shouldn't need me to tell you that." Her voice then bordered on the cold – hard-edged and impersonal. "Your presence will be far more of a distraction than your absence ever was. Everyone on Coruscant will be far too busy working out the protocol for trying and executing you to care remotely about the existence of Morrigance, or what she may or may not be doing. You'll simply be helping her."

His lips twitched into something that wasn't quite a smile. Neither of them had any remote illusions about proving innocence here.

"Not everyone," he said quietly.

It wasn't as if this subject wasn't something they hadn't both considered. He'd been going over and over it in his head as if it was some kind of convoluted battle plan, trying to unpick every single possibility or flaw before it could occur. Futility defined. "Dodonna and a sizable faction of the military won't ignore it." He counted the points off on fingers. "There have been a number of senators asking some very pointed questions too. And the Jedi Council will not allow emotion to get in the way of reason."

A headtail flicked. Darkly cynical amusement. "So, let me get this straight. You're relying on convincing the Jedi Council that a threat exists to the Republic so severe as to demand immediate action. Have I got that right?"

The not quite smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. _Put like that . . .._

But he shook his head. "This time I'm only relying on giving people cause to look in the right place. Invoking suspicion, and ensuring that proper investigation takes place. She relies on the shadows, so take the shadows away. In the end, I think that's all that needs to be done. They can't simply dismiss Jolee and Bastila out of hand, even if they can me."

There was a period of quiet, where the soft hum of the _Rancorous's_ systems began to seem very loud. Like an audible representation of that inexorably flowing sand.

"So allow Jolee and Bastila take the hologram to Coruscant." When she spoke again, Yuthura's voice sounded unnaturally calm and controlled. He could tell that, beneath the surface, she was absolutely anything but.

For a second or so he wanted to be able to agree with her more than anything else in the entire universe. It was desperately difficult to let that go.

"I'm a fugitive." His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. "Probably, if it isn't too arrogant for me to say so, _the_ fugitive right now. If it even looks slightly like they've been aiding me in evading capture it would go very, very badly for them both. I think we can be sure something like that wouldn't be overlooked."

_They're tainted badly enough by association as it is._

She didn't say anything. He could hear her breathing; slow and steady – almost somnolent. The posture of her lekku likewise reflected placidity. Another surface illusion.

"Are we really arguing about this?" he said finally; softly. "Do you genuinely disagree with what I'm doing here?"

There was a quiet intake of breath from her. He stood up and moved across the room to where she sat.

"I think, given the fact that there are _most_ unlikely to be any second chances here, it is useful to make absolutely sure of our choices." Her gaze remained fixed on a point somewhere directly in front of her. "We won't have opportunity to argue about it later."

_Later . . .. _Tamar touched her shoulder. After a brief moment of tension, she relaxed back against him.

"My master once told me there was a vast difference between self-sacrifice and self-indulgence, though from close range the two can sometimes look very much alike." This time, finally, she did look round at him.

The expression on her face made something inside him clench. After a moment's silence, his hand came up to gently caress one of her lekku, which flexed beneath his touch, sleek and muscular. "Perhaps I'll finally get the chance to meet him when we get to Coruscant," he said.

A slightly sad smile touched her lips. "Kwex was never much at home on Coruscant. I almost hope he's not there now."

A soft murmur escaped her throat as he continued to stroke her lekku. He struggled with his thoughts. "I . . . I am as convinced as I can be that I'm not letting myself be driven to this decision out of guilt or a misplaced desire to force some kind of artificial atonement." Deep breath. The smooth warmth of her skin; the rhythm of her pulse, quickening now; the scent of her floating on the air – it was all impossibly distracting. The urge to simply let go and lose himself was fierce. "I am absolutely convinced it is the right call for me to make."

Another, louder murmur from her. "We'll just have to hope you're right then, won't we?"

His mouth felt dry. He tried to smile, but couldn't. "Now you really are scaring me."

Her lips peeled back from sharpened teeth. What he saw glinting in her eyes then was almost fury. "There's a part of me – a very big part – that wants to scream at the Republic to frak off and sort its own damn problems out. That you're mine, and I will _not_ give you up for this."

Then, more quietly: "And yes, it _does_ scare me."

Tamar hesitated, but decided he had to try saying it anyway. "_You_ don't have to be caught up in it. In fact, you shouldn't be caught up in it. A way out might not exist for me, but it does for you. You should walk away."

Another snort. "Stop halfway and drop me off somewhere. Oh yes. I can definitely see our escorts being overjoyed by that."

"Frak them."

"That isn't what scares me, and you know it, Tamar. Reverse our positions." At this proximity, her eyes looked huge. "Reverse your position with any who you call a friend for that matter."

After a moment's pause, he nodded, almost resignedly.

"Then you have your answer. Do me the respect of not bringing it up again."

The urge to argue flared briefly, then died away as he looked at her. It was less than eight hours now. Getting less all the time. In a way that seemed to resolve matters – clarify everything down into its simplest, most elemental components.

There was now. There was her.

He leant forwards. She did the same.

Second time around was barely less ferociously intense than the first.

-s-s-

Dustil made no move to step forward, out of the ysalamari's sphere of influence. His expression looked decidedly sullen, although perhaps some of that was down to the badly swollen lip. A crusted line of dried blood ran down from the corner of his mouth and there were livid circles beneath his eyes that at first glance resembled bruises. In fact, his entire complexion was pale and waxily unhealthy. Taken in combination with several days of stubble growth, it would have been easy to dismiss him as just another of the multitude of vagrants that collected on the Agatan's fringes.

He'd definitely deteriorated badly from the last time Morrigance had laid eyes on him.

As she looked at him, she felt a momentary surge of anger aimed in Rath's direction. She had specified in terms that left no room for ambiguity: he was not to be harmed in any way.

_But_ . . . an exhalation, and she allowed that annoyance to seep away. Grudgingly, she had to acknowledge that, from what she'd seen of him, Dustil was unlikely to have been a model guest.

This, however, was unlikely to make an already difficult task any easier. His entire posture suggested emphatically that he was in no mood to be even remotely cooperative.

"I would suggest you follow me and not argue for the moment," she told him briskly, breaking the lengthy silence. "Right now you're in a considerable amount of danger."

"From you?" The sneer he favoured her with was pretty much the response she'd been anticipating. "If that's a threat, you need to practise. Even Shaardan was scarier than _that_."

"No, not from me." She kept her voice imperiously calm, refusing to be drawn into the fight he was clearly spoiling for. "You see the gentleman over my left shoulder?"

As she spoke, she found herself wondering briefly what Celyanda was doing. As far as she could tell, the three of them were still standing exactly where she'd left them, silent and motionless. It was almost as if they were . . . communing with each other somehow.

That thought left her feeling profoundly disturbed, and her eagerness to be done with all this as quickly as possible intensified markedly.

Dustil's eventual response was a grudging nod. Force sense or not, the suspicion and hostility he was giving off couldn't be missed or misinterpreted.

"He's a Sith Assassin," she explained. "Some know him as the Catcher. Perhaps you heard of him while you were on Korriban. I gather that he has . . . something of a reputation. Anyway, right now he's looking specifically for you. From a certain perspective, that could almost be viewed as an honour."

The way that Dustil's eyes narrowed betrayed that he most definitely had heard of the Catcher. And his immediate response was absolutely furious.

"What do you take me for exactly?" He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. "You seriously expect me to buy the fact that the Sith have remotely enough spare time and resources to waste on sending assassins to chase down random deserters?" An angry, denying headshake. "And the _Catcher_? Please. That really is just priceless. If it wasn't so pathetic it would be laughable."

Morrigance folded her arms across her chest. He definitely wasn't laughing, she noted. In fact, there was a kind of hunted desperation shadowing his face. "Why else to do you imagine I went to all the trouble and expense of having Rath hold you? It was hardly an act that was likely to make you any better disposed towards me, was it?"

Dustil started to open his mouth, but she didn't allow him the chance to protest further. "And I believe that the Catcher wishes to use you in order to get to your father. Such are the perils of having a famous war hero in the family."

His jaw shut quickly, and briefly, he looked very, very shaken. An attempt to hide his reaction behind a facade of scornful indifference was largely unsuccessful. Part of her was sure he was going to demand to know why she'd been talking to this so called 'Catcher' a few minutes previously, and insist that it all must be some kind of twisted and elaborate ruse designed to secure his cooperation.

But he didn't.

Instead, he changed the subject entirely.

"What the frak did you do to Elendri, bitch?" Dark eyes glittered feverishly, close to dementia. "I know she's gone. It has to be you."

For a moment, she simply stared at him, her annoyance at Rath resurfacing. That was one card she most definitely hadn't wanted him to know about until the correct moment came for her to play it.

Except . . . it could still be used to her advantage.

"I kept her safe, Dustil. Exactly like I kept you safe. Until right now, at any rate. I suggest we talk while we walk. I'm going to walk." She turned around abruptly as she spoke and proceeded to do exactly that, striding rapidly straight towards one of the landing pad's exits. "Ultimately, Dustil," she called back to him, "you can do as you please. That choice is always yours."

And after a second or so, she heard his footsteps, slightly ragged and uneven, behind her – felt the seethingly tangled and twisted knot of his Force presence as it seemingly materialised from nowhere.

If he wanted to find out about Elendri, he had to follow her. And it seemed he wanted _that_ enough to overcome what his every other instinct was doubtless telling him.

-s-s-

"_Breaking news just in . . . crowds of protesters streaming into the Plaza of Infinite Suns . . ._"

The sound of the news feed fogged out as the back of Carth's head cracked against the floor. Vision blurring, pain stabbing through his battered ribcage, he arched his back and kicked out hard as the Iridorian advanced rapidly to finish him off.

Dromon staggered back a couple of steps as he caught him in the chest. It bought Carth just enough time to get his feet back under him.

The floor seemed to undulate alarmingly, his breath coming in sharp, grating gasps. His back felt cold and wet where Dromon's vibroblade had sliced through his jacket. Obviously, it had drawn blood as well as simply cut cloth like he'd initially thought. The flow of adrenaline still kept him from feeling more than a ghostly suggestion of the pain.

That vibroblade was now lying in the room's corner.

"_Rumours are rife that . . ."_

Too far to risk. Carth's gaze flicked towards where one of his own blasters had fallen, just beneath the drinks table. Closer, but still a daunting distance.

"_. . . Revan . . ." _

He glanced upwards. The brief instant of distraction almost proved to be a fatal one. A blow that would have half taken Carth's head off had it hit him full on was halfway ducked, though it still connected solidly enough to open up a shallow, bloody gash across his forehead.

"_. . . been taken into Jedi custody . . ."_

Carth reeled backwards, vision swimming chaotically. A vicious kick caught him in the midriff, doubling him over and blasting most of the breath from his lungs.

"_. . . seem convinced that the former Dark Lord is to be delivered . . ."_

He gave ground desperately, vainly trying to suck in air. Dromon closed in, frighteningly fast and powerful.

"_. . . the Jedi Temple here on Coruscant within the next few hours . . ."_

It was a bit like how Carth imagined fighting a twenty-year younger version of Canderous would be – one seemingly unfettered by any hint of self-preservation instinct. Blood ran into his eyes, his forearms absorbing further kicks, now little more than a single aching mass of bruises that he struggled to keep raised defensively.

"_. . . We now pass over to our roving reporter at the scene of the disturbances, Shaula . . ."_

Carth never did get to hear what the roving reporter had to say. At that moment, Dromon's entire bulk slammed into him head on.

Grappling, the two of them staggered backwards – ungainly dance partners. After few stumbling steps, they collided with the drinks table. Both it and the glasses on top of it toppled over, crashing to the floor in a rain of alcohol, crushed ice and glass shards. A fraction afterwards, still locked in one another's embrace, they stumbled straight over it, ending up sprawled together in the middle of the wreckage – a tangled mass of thrashing limbs.

At close proximity, the Iridorian's strength was overpowering.

For as long as he'd been able to keep him at arms length, Carth had been able to just about hold his own. Now though, as Dromon squeezed, it became impossible to draw breath into his lungs, and he felt himself being bent slowly and inexorably backwards until the point where it felt certain his spine was going to snap. Unable to get any proper leverage into ragged, desperate blows with either fists or forearms or knees, he might as well have been trying to pound his way through a permacrete wall barehanded.

Blood rushed loudly in Carth's ears. His vision contracted down into a narrow black tunnel. In desperation, he drove his forehead into the middle of Dromon's face as it hovered inches above his own.

Dromon, teeth bloody, simply grinned down at him and returned the favour twofold.

Carth felt his nose crunch and break with the second impact, a swirling explosion of weird light patterns dancing behind his eyes. Dimly and distantly, he was aware of Dromon shifting his grip. Something sharp sliced across the back of his hand as it flopped limply.

Desperate, bloody-minded refusal to give in to reality made his hand clench and grip the glass shard. Jagged edges cut deeply into his fingers, but he barely felt it. Muscles tensed and flexed, more on instinct than from any conscious prompting. His arm swung, connecting with something solid.

Dromon reared back, the crushing pressure on Carth's spine finally letting up.

His vision cleared enough for him to see the Iridorian swaying, wild-eyed, one hand clutching at the side of his neck where a four-inch dagger of glass now sprouted. Blood flowed thickly between heavy fingers.

Almost screaming with the effort required, Carth heaved Dromon off him, gasping raggedly as he rolled over and groped around for his blaster.

Torn, bloody fingers closed around the grip. Twisting instantly, Carth pulled the trigger twice in quick succession, barely aiming.

Both shots hit Dromon in the chest. The Iridorian, lunging forward at him again despite the neck wound, toppled like a felled wroshyr tree.

Carth waited for him to move – to get up – the blaster stilled trained on Dromon's fallen form.

Seconds passed. He didn't. The air stank of charred flesh and fried ozone. With a groan, Carth finally allowed himself to relax a fraction.

With that relaxation, every single blow and knock he'd sustained seemed to come crashing down on him. The pain from his cut fingers and broken nose; the pounding his ribcage had taken, turning each intake of breath into its own miniature ordeal; each and every muscle-deep bruise, too many of those to count.

His legs almost buckled, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to hold on. Over on the news feed some woman was twittering away over-excitedly, but he couldn't make himself concentrate hard enough to pick out any of the individual words. It was showing a sweeping panoramic shot of the Jedi temple and the main square outside it, in which there must have been getting on for several thousand people gathered already, with more of them streaming in by the moment.

He pulled his gaze away – struggled to focus back onto more immediate problems. Like the fact that Yolanda had chased Chan through that door there, what was now probably several minutes ago . . ..

He went for his comm., intending to raise Juhani, but it must have fallen out of his ear at some point during the struggle with Dromon. Amidst all the broken glass and melting ice scattered over every nearby surface, finding it again would have been next to impossible even if his vision wasn't fading in and out like a bad holo signal.

Groaning with the effort it required, he recovered his second blaster from the floor, then set of after Yolanda in a limping jog.

-s-s-

"Enough." Dustil was dismayed to hear how shaky his voice was. Through the lift car's transparisteel windows the Agatan's brutally industrial landscape passed by at blurring speed, scarred metal towers belching smoke into Coruscant's sky.

Morrigance looked around at him slowly. At least, that blank reflective mask swivelled his way. Around them, the lift car hummed steadily.

"You're going to tell me what you did to Elendri. Now." He couldn't help feeling that it sounded more like a small child stamping his foot and threatening a tantrum than the absolute and undeniable ultimatum it had been meant as.

As he finished though, he deliberately opened himself fully to the Force, reaching through it explicitly for the first time in nearly a year. The immediate sensation left him dizzy and light-headed – caught between soaring exultation and vertiginous fear. He was able to sense the flow of energy through the walls around them clearly, powering the lift's movement. "If you don't . . ." A stifled groan of effort forced its way between his lips, the energy flows distorting. The lift car lurched alarmingly around them. ". . . then we're both going to come to a very hard stop."

"Fascinating," he heard her murmur.

Then, to him directly: "Impressive. The fine manipulation of the inanimate is not something everyone can master. And I don't believe it ever formed part of Dreshdae's official curriculum."

He grunted, not letting his concentration slip. "I told you. I'm a speeder mechanic." There was another jolt, more violent than the first. "And I mean it. I'll kill us both if I don't receive an answer that satisfies me completely." As he spoke, he could feel sweat running in a cold stream down his back. "_Now._"

"I don't doubt you." Her response remained infuriatingly calm and unflappable. "As for Elendri . . .. Miss Ves is currently on Alderaan. She is, I'm given to understand, delighted by her new job, part of a highly reputable dance and performance troupe. I believe that she wants to redecorate your new apartment though, green not being her colour."

Dustil gaped at her. He felt his grip on the lift car waver and refocused on it furiously.

"At the moment," Morrigance continued, "she is under the firm impression that you've come into a significant amount of money, and have arranged all of this for her. She's expecting you to join up with her on Alderaan in a few weeks' time, once you've tied up loose ends here on Coruscant. I'll leave it to your discretion as to whether you want to disabuse her of any of these notions."

"I'm supposed to just take your word on all this, am I?" he finally bit out.

His head was spinning though. Part of him wanted to believe what he'd just been told so badly that it was hard to maintain a proper grip on his scepticism. His hold on the lift car slid away entirely.

"Now that _would _have been a naïve assumption on my part, wouldn't it?"

An object that looked like a holo-recording crystal sat on the palm of her hand. After a moment's hesitation, he took it from her. Sweaty fingers made him fumble briefly at the controls, but it came to life a moment later.

And there, floating directly above the palm of his hand, a twenty-centimetre high representation of Elendri appeared. Staring at her, it felt to Dustil as if his entire body clenched tight. She looked like she was dressed for travel, wearing what – for her – was a relatively plain jumpsuit, with numerous bags piled on the ground around her and another slung over her shoulder. Her face . . .

He blinked. She was grinning, but he could see that she'd been crying too. Her headtails were moving repeatedly in a manner that spoke of barely contained excitement.

"Dustil!" There was a mix of delight and confusion in her voice, made more odd by the slightly tinny sound of the recording. "Dustil, how ever did you . . .?" She stopped, brow furrowing in that slightly vexed way she had. Which cleared abruptly, transforming into a look of determination that was equally familiar. "No. They said I didn't have much time, and you can't answer me now anyway. Look, I know you have things to take care of, but please, hurry and join me on Alderaan . . .." It looked then like something had occurred to her, because the frown came back instantly. "Hey, this better not be your way of dumping me, because I swear . . ."

Hastily, he switched it off again, silencing Elendri's words mid flow. He was shaking. He didn't want to hear anymore. Or more accurately, he didn't want Morrigance to hear anymore. Which was utterly irrational. She'd doubtlessly already seen everything on the recording, and probably more than once.

So perhaps, if he were to be entirely honest, he didn't want her viewing his own reaction to it. He could feel his cheeks burning as it was.

"That proves nothing. You could have had her killed the moment after it was recorded."

"But I didn't. And I think you know that I didn't."

And . . . on some level, he did know, but he couldn't allow himself to simply accept. Because dealing with Morrigance in terms of rage and hate – a figure he could lash out at and focus all of his frustrations on – was easy.

The alternatives weren't.

She gestured towards the lift car's info terminal, then reeled off a number. He recognised it as a holoNet comm. code, off-world. He didn't recognise the system prefix, but it was in the right range for Alderaan to be a possibility.

"I don't know what time it is where she is, and I have no clue whether she'll be in or not, but please go ahead."

With a lingering look of suspicion, he reluctantly turned his back on her and entered the number at the terminal. The connecting tone seemed to go on forever and he could feel an uncomfortable itching, prickling sensation between his shoulder blades where he imagined her gaze was fixed.

His heart nearly stopped when the connecting tone stopped and someone picked up.

"Um . . . hello?" No image appeared, the other end set to privacy mode. Despite that, he couldn't mistake Elendri's voice for that of anyone else, even blurred through several layers of sleep as it sounded. "Do you have any _idea_ what time it is?"

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His throat seemed to have contracted shut.

"Hello? Who is this?" The initial sleepiness was replaced by rapidly growing irritation. Dustil realised that he must be in privacy mode too, but made no move to switch it off and reveal himself. Paralysis gripped him.

Irritation became downright anger as the silence from his end lengthened. "Look frak-for-brains, I worked a double shift today. I'm tired. I'm pissed-off. I'm not in the mood for more weirdo nerfsacks making crank calls. If you're anyone I know, I'll . . . I'll hunt you down and rip your frakking balls off."

At this point nothing he had to say felt remotely like a good idea. In a way, it felt like it would be far, far kinder not to force his way back into her life – to make the cut clean and allow Elendri her new start, untainted by the baggage he carried with him.

There was a stream of venomous Twi'lek invective, only some of which he understood – though part of that did include 'the rancid vomit crustings of the diseased fleas of a mangy schutta'. Then the line went dead.

He expected Morrigance to make some kind of comment. She didn't.

He was aware of the lift car decelerating before coming to a gentle halt, the doors sliding open and letting in a gust of warm, fume-laden air. Grimacing, he steeled himself and turned to face her again. "So what do you want from me?"

"Right now I want you to follow me without arguing. We can talk more when we're somewhere safer than this."

After a long hesitation, Dustil nodded.

-s-s-

"Argh! You bitch! You insane frakking, schutta-spawn bitch." The words were punctuated by the sound of uneven, agonised gasping. "You shot me in the leg." There was a kind of childlike, disbelieving astonishment to the voice. "You shot me in the frakking leg!"

Carth rounded the corner of the alleyway to see Yolanda standing over Chan's supine form, a holdout blaster aimed at the fallen man's head. His own breathing grated through a combination of broken nose and damaged ribs, but he felt oddly detached from the world around him, all the undoubted pain strangely muffled and distant. The urge to stop, just for a moment, and rest was near overpowering though. Catch his breath. Get his strength back . . .

He stumbled, catching himself one-handed against the alleyway wall. The problem, Carth knew from painful experience, was that if he allowed himself to stop, his entire body was probably going to seize up.

"I'll take that as thanks for my impeccable aim," he heard Yolanda saying. "Perhaps you'd like to consider for a moment the consequences if I'd hit a few inches higher. No?"

The sound that followed suggested that Chan had tried to spit at her. By the look of things, he'd only managed to project the phlegm onto his own chest.

In wordless response, Yolanda trod on Chan's injured thigh.

The high, thin shriek that resulted pierced the clouds of lethargy gathering in around Carth. He watched numbly as Chan thrashed on the rubbish-strewn floor.

"Silly boy. Now, perhaps you could get back to my earlier question? You have another leg, you know."

Gritting his teeth, still able to taste blood in his mouth, Carth forced himself to push away from the wall and resume walking. The effort made him gasp involuntarily, breath hissing sharply between his teeth as his entire ribcage spasmed.

Yolanda finally seemed to notice him, briefly glancing his way.

Attempting to take advantage of her apparent distraction, Chan tried to kick her legs out from under her while simultaneously grabbing at the wrist of the arm holding her blaster. Yolanda evaded neatly, skipping easily over his flailing legs. As she landed, she managed to tread on his injured thigh again, planting an elbow in the middle of his face in the same movement.

As Chan groaned, clutching at his face, Yolanda smiled down at him unsympathetically. "Tsk, tsk. Not very sensible. And what's this? It looks like my friend has arrived. Unlike me, he has something of a . . . temper."

Carth almost snorted at that, but there was an unhealthy rushing sensation in his ears and it took a good deal of concentration simply to keep going forward in something approximating a straight line. His face felt like some kind of overlarge comedy mask.

"From the look of things," Yolanda continued cheerily, "your big Iridorian companion has managed to do a pretty good job of provoking him. So unless your memory improves _very_ quickly, your day is going to get a good deal worse than it is already. "

Chan, Carth noted as he came to a halt again, had lost his shades somewhere. He looked much younger without them, the surface veneer of toughness splintered into myriad small, disarrayed fragments. Truth be told, he looked scared and vulnerable, fear having won out over anger and pride.

Carth found himself throttling back a sudden surge of something not too far removed from pity. He swallowed in an effort to lubricate his throat. "All I want from you are details of my son's new identity." It came out halfway between growl and croak, though that was more because that was the best approximation he could manage to speech right now than out of any desire to intimidate. "This didn't have to be so difficult." He paused, gathering himself as the world around him seemingly began to sway. "It doesn't need to be any more difficult."

Chan laughed hollowly.

Yolanda raised an eyebrow, pointedly shifting the aim of her blaster up towards his groin.

"You might as well pull the trigger. She already has me by the balls. Maybe it'll be liberating."

It occurred to Carth that he probably had some kind of concussion, because that went completely over his head. One thing remained absolutely transparisteel clear though: "Just tell me about my son!"

"I don't _know_ about your frakking son." Chan let out another weary, half-despairing laugh. "Frak, I really don't get paid enough for this crap."

The urge to kick him until he started making some kind of sense was suddenly nearly overwhelmingly powerful.

"Explain," he gritted out, hands clenching. Part of him was slightly shocked about how easy it would be to just let the violence and rage spill out in one cathartic rush, and damn all consequences it might have . . .

Chan tried to sit up. Yolanda planting her foot in the centre of his chest stopped that short.

"Look." He seemed to be trying to sound reasonable. "You're both operating under the assumption that I run this particular operation, aren't you? An understandable mistake, I admit. That's the way it's supposed to look. From the outside."

Taking the look on their faces, reasonableness tipped over into wheedling desperation. By now, Chan was sweating copiously. "I'm just the . . . what's the word? The figurehead? Yeah, the figurehead. That's it. I act as a front – a face everyone knows – and draw the fire from my real employer. Usually the perks outweigh the downsides."

Although not today, obviously.

"Nice line in bantha-spit." Yolanda's foot pushed down harder on his chest, making him grimace. "But really, if you want it to sound remotely convincing, you need to get your story straight before you start spinning it."

Carth though, found himself believing Chan. In his head, he could hear the woman from downstairs speaking. _Come on T4. I can tell when we're not wanted. Let's leave the boys here to their . . . _fun. He could smell the industrial-grade perfume and feel the brush of her hip against his as she swept past him.

_Frak._

"Is it the woman or the droid?" he demanded.

Chan's gaze snapped round on him. "The _droid_?" There was an odd look in his eyes though, belying the initial astonishment. It suggested that, although that had never occurred to him previously, it wasn't something that he could dismiss out of hand.

But it didn't really matter, and Carth wasn't listening to any further response that might have been forthcoming.

He'd already turned away, reaching up to activate the comm. unit in his ear. Forgetting, again, that he'd lost it.

There was a questioning look on Yolanda's face as he looked back at her in mute appeal.

"Call Juhani" He could feel his cheeks burning as he spoke, his voice gruff. "Tell her . . ."

"I know what to tell her," she answered simply.

-s-s-

"This distresses you, doesn't it."

Bastila's response to Jolee's words was little more than a non-committal grunt. She continued to stand with her back to him, knuckles white where they gripped the metal railing in front of her. Down below, one of the _Rancorous's_ shuttles was being prepped by maintenance droids, misty clouds of coolant vapour hanging white upon the air. It wouldn't be ready for use for several hours, and she wasn't sure what had compelled her to come here and watch.

Perhaps the simple fact that there was no peace to be found anywhere else, so she might as well stand here and watch the approaching doom.

The silence lengthened, and eventually she felt Jolee give the mental equivalent of a shrug. "Suit yourself." A short time later, she heard his footsteps, moving away from her.

At the landing bay door, the footsteps paused. "If you find you _do_ want to talk to someone before everything bottled up inside you explodes, I'll be around." He stifled a yawn. "Possibly taking a nap or something else vitally important."

She exhaled, hands clenching tighter on the railing. "Wait."

He turned back. She opened her mouth, but closed it again as she realised she didn't know how to begin.

"Well, girl? Awfully cruel to keep an old man hanging on like this. I've only got so much time left, you know."

"Haven't we all," she muttered beneath her breath. The amount of time it took to finish prepping a shuttle, give or take. Then she added, more loudly: "What did you mean by 'this', exactly?"

"Ah, well now. What did you think I meant? Maybe that's the place to start."

She snorted, but even that didn't manage to sound convincing to her own ears.

Tamar. Tamar might be getting better at shielding the link from her, but not yet to the extent that he could entirely hide _why_ he was blocking her out. It was somewhat like being in the room next to his, the door between them closed and locked, but the soundproofing not quite good enough to keep out all of the noises emanating from the other side.

She wasn't sure why it left her so . . . _excised_. Part of her thought that she should be happy for him – that he could move on and build a life for himself, even in these circumstances. But the brutal fact was, she wasn't, and couldn't even pretend to be.

In fact, there were occasions where she found herself wondering if she'd come to hate him.

_Why should he get to move forward and on when I have not? Didn't he do much worse than I did? It's not fair! _

_Why do I have to keep all my memories of what I did when he does not?_

It was insanely childish, she knew. Worse than childish. Dangerous.

But that knowledge didn't make all the thoughts just float away and vanish.

The skin of her face felt hot, and she was very glad that Jolee couldn't see it. Of course, he hadn't meant any of that. Or at least, she hoped profoundly that he hadn't. His perceptiveness sometimes verged upon the frightening.

Finally, she forced herself to speak, fearing that even silence – especially silence – gave far too much away. "If you meant, am I concerned about the prospect of having to stand before the Jedi Council, then . . ." Bastila took a deep breath. "I am. Much as it shames me to admit it."

"Hmm."

For a long, painfully embarrassing moment, she thought he was going to accuse her of lying to him, but he didn't. Instead, he added: "In the circumstances, a certain amount of trepidation is only sensible, don't you think? One might even say it's wise."

"Wise?" Bastila almost laughed at that. "And is it wise for a Jedi to have so little faith in the ability of the Jedi Council to make the correct decision?"

_The correct decision, or the decision you want?_

Jolee made a noncommittal noise, and she could tell that he'd shrugged again even if she didn't see it. He moved up to stand next to her and she saw a dark, creased hand come to rest on the railing a few centimetres from her own. "A Jedi needs to acknowledge that he or she is fallible. You'd agree with that much?"

All too fallible in her case. But she nodded cautiously.

"Then surely it follows that a Jedi needs to acknowledge that all her fellow Jedi are fallible too. Even the Masters. Even the Council."

Which, despite the obvious logic of it, still managed to sound almost like heresy. "And you, old man?" She regretted the harsh edge to the words even as it passed her lips. "Do you include yourself here?"

A chuckle. "Oh, I'm more fallible than anybody. Surely you've noticed? I've just managed to grow comfortable with my fallibility over the years." He paused musingly. "In fact I'd even go so far as to say that I've come to enjoy it."

She shot him a sidelong look, halfway disbelieving.

"Imagine what it would be like, always being right." A shudder passed through him. "No fun at all in as far as I can see."

"Hah."

She looked away from him again, staring down at the droids moving around the shuttle. Eventually, some of the inner turmoil seemed to loosen its grip on her and slide away. "Stop trying to be perfect?"

"Stop beating yourself about not being perfect," he corrected quietly. "Jedi feel all the little things that everybody else does. That's not wrong, or something you should be ashamed of."

One of her hands came up to rub at her eyes. The fumes from the coolant were making them itch. "Any other bits of wisdom you'd care to impart while you're at it." Again it managed to come out far more harshly than she'd intended.

"Well, let's see." There was the sound of an indrawn breath, followed by a soft clucking noise. "Don't smuggle arms on Vendaxa Prime unless you have a _very_ fast ship. Don't insult Ukatis Enforcers behind their backs." He tapped one ear. "Helmet sensors you know; amplifies the hearing. Trying to distil hard liquor from marjulla berries rarely has a positive outcome. Drinking the end product _never_ does." She saw him shudder. "I swear I can still taste it, forty years on."

"Well thanks." Bastila didn't bother concealing the sarcasm. "I'll try to bear all that in mind."

Jolee continued as if he hadn't heard her, the tone of his voice altering just a fraction. "Stop worrying about things you can't change, and try to concentrate on those that you can."

Bastila opened her mouth to protest, but never got the chance to speak.

"Most of all, stop listening to the babblings of senile old men as if they know the secrets of the universe. They don't."

She snorted again, but this time it was followed by something approximating to a smile.

"Well, much as I enjoy hanging out in deserted shuttle bays with pretty young ladies . . ." Suddenly he was gone from her side and she heard his footsteps, walking away.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Hang on." She forced herself to relax her grip on the railing. "I'll come with you."

-s-s-

"Acknowledged," Juhani interrupted, cutting Yolanda off before severing the comm. link between them.

Lying on the ground around her were half a dozen unconscious bodies – human, Gran, a rather scrawny looking Trandoshan. She'd taken it upon herself to intercept them before they could rush to the defence of their employer inside. The opportunity to finally release some of the pent up frustrations of the past few days had proved to be . . . satisfying.

Perhaps too satisfying, when it came to it. As the flow of adrenaline subsided, she couldn't help but worry that she'd enjoyed it all rather too much – letting instinct get of the better of her again. And being forced to resort to violence should always be a source of regret to a Jedi.

But nevertheless . . .

Her eyes narrowed, piercing the gloom around her. Somewhere close by an electric light flickered erratically, the hum it gave off pitched at a timbre that was particularly aggravating to her sensitive hearing, setting her back teeth on edge and making the fur on her cheeks flatten.

_A woman with pink hair, accompanied by a utility droid . . ._

Laying aside her lingering distrust towards Carth's companion – there was no single reason for the feeling that she could pinpoint, but it persisted nevertheless – she concentrated on Yolanda's words instead, bringing her memories of the last several minutes to the surface and letting them replay in her head as if she was a remote observer watching a holo-feed.

It was a technique that Quatra had taught her, and the thought of her master made her stumble momentarily. She recovered quickly though, and a short time later, she was floating amid a sea of images, gripped by icily impassive calm, sorting everything that had passed before her eyes with clinical speed and efficiency.

There. Moving unhurriedly.

Just a glimpse: a flash of that pink hair in the periphery of her vision that hadn't drawn more than the tiniest fragment of her attention at the time. She isolated the moment and focused in on it tightly, trying to strip it of every conceivable fragment of useful information.

There wasn't much. Another of the multitude of street girls working these lower reaches had been her vague, unconsciously reached assessment.

Allowing the image to fall away, Juhani reached down to the stealth field generator. As it activated, she felt the familiar sensation of her fur bristling from the slight static charge it imparted. Then, all but invisible – quieter even than the background grumble of the filters that stirred the stale air of the underlevels in a sluggish pretence of a breeze – she started to pursue.

-s-s-

"There's food, drink, clean clothes. A holo-feed and a comm. link. A bed if you desire rest. I'll leave it to you what you want to take advantage off." As she spoke, Morrigance could feel the skin on the back of her neck prickling. There was a tight, urgent tension inside her chest as she turned her back on Dustil and moved to leave him to his own devices.

"Wait."

"We'll talk later." It was difficult to keep the edge of that tension and impatience out of her voice. The timing of this latest problem was, by any reckoning, excruciatingly bad.

"We'll talk now." His words and the expression on his face brooked no refusal.

She refused anyway. "No. We won't."

And with that, she walked out.

The door to his quarters slid shut between them. There was no lock on it – she knew that even the slightest perception that she was holding him against his will would irrevocably shatter the tentative and unspoken accord they'd for the moment come to – so he could have followed her, had he wanted.

He didn't.

Stubborn pride and refusal to be seen scurrying in her wake like some kind of overeager lackey. Behind her mask, her breath hissed in darkly self-mocking amusement. Right now, she would take whatever small mercies from the situation that she could.

_Celyanda_.

Part of her didn't expect there to be an answer so her mental call, so she was more than a little taken aback when a calm, wordless acknowledgement answered her immediately.

Sensors turned on lights automatically as she walked, the apartment spontaneously illuminating itself as she passed through it. The thick carpet muffled the sound of her boot heels.

_Why is he here?_ She tried to keep the thought measured and even, free of anger or rebuke. Free of unease. Except, of course, Celyanda would see through any pretence instantly, no matter how well constructed, right down to the core.

_Because that is the way things are_.

That response left her too stunned for any comeback. She stopped hard, staring at the door that blocked her way.

The Catcher was in the room beyond – the room she'd set up as her temporary study, office and nerve-centre. He was doing nothing to conceal his Force presence, and she could sense it clearly – a vast, blooming black flower edged in what seemed to be blazing blue flame. Mixed with the tight, turbulent knot that was Dustil, it felt as if she'd stepped into the eye of a rapidly burgeoning and ferociously intense storm. Part of her couldn't help but wonder at how her own presence would appear to an observer, caught between these two.

She almost laughed at herself.

Lightsaber, holdout blaster, defence drones. Various other . . . bits and pieces built into her flesh Inwardly, she accounted for every single little item that might be of use. _One can never be too careful._

Except, according to Revan – the dead version of him, at least – one could, and indeed, being too careful was one of the worst sins you could commit. She strongly suspected that _he_ would be hugely amused to see all this now.

Her hand came up, touching the door, and it slid open smoothly in recognition of her. How the Catcher had bypassed all of the security measures was not a question worth lingering on. As a Sith assassin, that was simply what he did.

Inside, the lights were off, and a holo-feed of some news channel was playing. What it was showing stopped her in her tracks.

"_Shaula, can you shed light on where these rumours of Revan's imminent return to Coruscant are originating from."_

The images showed her a setting that was instantly familiar– the Plaza of Infinite Suns on the main approach to the Jedi Temple, which loomed mutely in the background of the current footage, silently dominating the scene. The crowds of people though – those were something entirely unexpected.

"_Well, Vlob, at the moment speculation points to a source inside the Jedi Temple complex itself. But right now, that's all it is: speculation. One thing I can say with confidence: every person I've spoken to within the past hour is absolutely convinced that Revan will be arriving here in Jedi custody inside the next day."_

"_Thank you, Shaula. Now, we've heard reports that segments of the gathering crowd are not there to protest, but are instead intent on greeting Revan as some kind of . . . prodigal hero, you might say – even as a . . . returning messiah . . ."_

The words continued after that, but Morrigance had all but switched off from them.

At the very least, she'd assumed that Morna Rey would have been able to keep Revan entangled on Eres for the next few days, if not for weeks. Privately, she'd even hoped that the Admiral would manage to solve her problems once and for all by making the bastard disappear into one of the bottomless interrogation facilities the Republic liked to pretend it was far too nice and civilised to possess.

Instead, the stupid bitch was transporting him straight to Coruscant, to the Jedi Temple. Not only that, she was sending word ahead, and turning it into some kind ridiculous pantomime performance in the process . . .

_How very inconvenient for you. Game pieces daring to grow minds of their own._

Even if those minds were half-witted.

_Everything unravels all at once, just when you let yourself assume it's in the bag_. Not Revan, but her first employer, Drevon Rae. And he'd gone on to prove the truth of his own words in the most terminally emphatic fashion possible. Revan had too, in his own way.

Already wheels were turning over rapidly, spinning and trying to find a way to twist this to her advantage . . .

A low chuckle jolted her attention back to more immediate concerns. One problem at a time.

"All your doing, I take it?" The Catcher's voice was liquid silk. "I have to say, I'm seriously impressed by what you've managed to achieve."

Morrigance didn't deign to correct him, stepping all the way inside and allowing the door to slide shut at her back. A gesture of one black gloved hand and the holo-feed cut itself off. With the glare of that gone, the one patch of remaining brightness seemed to be the light reflecting off the Catcher's grinning teeth.

"How did you manage to persuade Celyanda to let you in here?" It was a genuine question, and one she was curious to know the answer to.

The grin didn't waver in the slightest. "We each of us pretended to work for dear departed Darth Auza, did we not?"

Morrigance stared at him – made rapid calculations in her head over how fast and hard she could strike if it came to that, and whether it would be remotely enough.

Perhaps he took her silence as a prompt for elaboration: "Despite our obvious surface differences, Celyanda and I found ourselves to have much in common philosophically." His hands spread, self-deprecatingly. "I was gratified to discover that, even now, they still hold me in high esteem."

"How _nice_."

Another chuckle. "I assure you Morrigance, their loyalty remains firmly yours. I only sit before you now because I was able to convince them that I intend you no harm. And, of course, that this meeting would be beneficial to us all.

"Besides, I have no desire to share the fate of the Jedi Council."

His smile left her unaccountably chilled. The words were just so much flummery – a sleight of hand artist at play.

"I told you before Naemon, I will not allow you to have Dustil." She paused fractionally, internally editing ahead as she realised that this conversation probably had an audience. Certainly, if she was Dustil, she would be seeking to listen in by any means at her disposal – and indeed, she'd be almost disappointed with him if he wasn't. "Whatever else you might want – _Revan_ for instance – you're more than welcome to try and take, but leave me out of it. I'm no longer of the Sith, and sometimes old acquaintance should remain that way."

The Catcher unfolded himself from her chair, moving with a fluidity that made him resemble a manifest part of the surrounding darkness. "I suppose it would be gauche of me to offer you a seat in your own office." Dazzling teeth and eyes like bottomless tar pits. "The boy is interesting, is he not? And not just as a means to an end as I had thought to use him. The way the Force twists around him . . ." He leant forwards. "I would be curious to know how he got to be that way."

"Your curiosity will, unfortunately, have to remain unsated. Now, if that is all?"

Of course it wasn't all.

He tutted. "I remember you to be more patient than this, Morrigance. More willing to seize on every possible advantage that came your way. I _enjoyed _working for you."

She swallowed her retort. Getting rid of him quickly and efficiently was, in the circumstances, far preferable to getting caught up in a bout of verbal sparring.

"But in honesty, you did explain your position before." He swept her an extravagant bow. "I have, therefore, decided to accept your decision on the fate of the younger Onasi with good grace."

The ease with which that was conceded startled her. She felt a tiny shiver pass along the length of her spine as she watched him pacing before her like some kind of big predatory animal – still satiated for the moment, but perhaps growing hungrier.

"So what _do_ you want?" So like Dustil's words to her.

He didn't answer right away, continuing to pace right up until the point she was about to turn around and leave him to it.

"I do not claim to be able to see all of this web you have woven, Morrigance. I lack your particular kind of patient brilliance. But that corner of it that I can see . . ." She heard the breath whistle between his teeth, pantomimed awe.

She stared at him grimly, waiting.

He sighed then, mock sad. "But I get the sense that any attempt at flattery on my part will fall on deaf ears. So I will refrain."

The smile was warm now, different from before in a way that made her flesh crawl. Perhaps because this time, it seemed personal – and with him that was the most terrifying thing of all.

"To reach the point you wish me to get to." The smile faded away, a mirage dissipating into the air as you drew too close. His eyes seemed to glitter. "A woman who currently goes by the name of Yolanda works for you."

It was a statement rather than a question, and she treated it as such.

"She was present on Kamari Station recently," he continued, "and I will assume that she has reported to you about events there."

Her teeth were set on edge. He seemed to be waiting for some kind of response from her. "I thought you were intent on locating a point. From where I'm standing, I struggle to see it."

"She will have also have told you about one Ulvol Ellas, doctor and, formerly, a Jedi. As with many Caamasi, his particular field of expertise lay in the area of memory."

She didn't bother to deny it. She didn't bother to say anything at all.

The Catcher didn't seem particularly perturbed by her lack of outward response. "Dr Ellas is a part of me now." He let those words linger like a caress.

"This matters to me how?" Despite herself, being confronted with the truth of his nature always left her desperately uneasy.

He resumed pacing, hands folding behind his back. "Would it surprise you particularly to learn that Dr Ellas resigned from the Jedi Order after volunteering to perform a particularly vital task that ran counter to his ethics as a doctor? He felt that he needed time in order to attempt to reconcile the conflicting components of his life."

_Why the frak are you telling me this_, she started to demand, but caught herself as realisation hit her.

_Memory_ . . .

Sometimes, not having a face with which to give away your reactions could be a definite advantage.

"Would it surprise you," the Catcher continued, "to learn that Dr Ellas was largely responsible for the reconstruction of Darth Revan's mind following his . . . little accident."

Suddenly Morrigance's chest was tight. Instinctive fury welled up inside her, and for a moment the urge to lash out was difficult to contain.

"The Doctor's memories of the procedure are . . . well, I find them fascinating. He had access to the shattered fragments that were left behind after Malak's assault, and he oversaw every aspect of the creation of Revan's new persona. In effect, all of that now belongs to me."

He stopped – trailed a hand across the surface of the desktop between them. _And given what we both just saw on the holo-feed . . .._ He didn't need to add those particular words. She could do that for herself.

"And? What exactly are you proposing here?" Morrigance thought she could guess though. It wasn't particularly difficult.

The smile was back, broader and brighter than ever. "An alliance."

-s-s-

Juhani moved so deeply within the Force that she was almost able to sense the woman's reaction to her – even to see herself through her eyes.

What had looked initially to be no more than one more shadow amid a multitude lengthened suddenly, filling out and becoming three-dimensional and solid. There was a flicker, and the shape assumed both colour and texture. Startled surprise traversed its way through a pounding moment of fear, before relaxing into something that felt like resigned acceptance.

Then Juhani had released her hold on the Force minutely, the disorientating impression fading until she was fully centred in herself again. Her lightsabers were ready in hand, but not yet ignited.

Hopefully they would not need to be.

The utility droid twittered and the pink-haired woman managed to force a rather weak looking smile. "You must be Jedi Juhani."

"You do not sound particularly surprised." Juhani's eyes narrowed, her senses expanding out around her, searching for any possibility of ambush she might have missed on her approach.

All she managed to detect was a comatose drunk in one of the run-off gutters about ten metres away. Now that she was aware of it, even at this distance, the smell he was giving off was distractingly unpleasant.

The woman's lips twisted. "I'm beginning to regret the day that I ever agreed to accept Dustil Onasi's money."

The utility droid beeped a couple of times.

"Then you know what I want from you." Juhani held the woman's gaze with her own. "And there is no need for any . . . unpleasantness between us."

There was another series of twittering beeps from the utility droid, and Juhani found herself wishing she'd been a bit more assiduous in learning to understand T3 rather than simply letting others translate for her. Droids were largely alien to Cathar culture, but that did not constitute an excuse.

"I'd appreciate it if you could reassure me about Terrell Chan first." The woman flipped her fringe back, out of her eyes. "He can be a very stupid boy sometimes, but I wouldn't want to see him come to any permanent harm."

Juhani's eyes narrowed, but the pink-haired woman didn't, from the available signs, seem to be stalling for time, and she could find no obvious sense of deception. There was no indication of anyone trying to sneak up on them either.

Finally, she nodded. "He was still alive a few minutes ago. I don't expect that to have altered. Whether or not he's in one piece is something I couldn't really say."

The woman's expression tightened briefly, but she nodded. "That will have to do, I suppose. They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, don't they."

Juhani didn't answer directly. It was all rhetorical she knew, but she wasn't sure she agreed with that any more. What didn't kill you usually had vastly more far-reaching and complex consequences than making you stronger.

Instead, she said: "This could have all been avoided very simply."

The woman shrugged. "Perhaps. But that's gone now." A breath puffed out. "Nikos Jentar is the name you're looking for. T4 will provide you with the id's serial numbers and holoprints. Personally, I'd start off by looking in and around the Agatan. But that's just me."

Juhani nodded. Part of her was surprised by how easily the information had been volunteered. Part of her was suspicious.

"Now, I hope our business is concluded?"

After a moment, Juhani nodded again

The woman looked briefly surprised, as if she hadn't expected this to go as easily either. "No offence, but I hope I never get to see either you or Captain Onasi again.

"Although . . ." She smiled. "He is rather dreamy."

-s-s-

They were waiting for him in the landing bay.

Tamar swallowed back the emotion that welled up inside him, blinking as his gaze moved quickly past them all to the shuttle that stood beyond them. The _Rancorous_ would be dropping out of hyperspace in a few minutes, and given that they had no idea what they would find waiting for them, it had seemed prudent to be ready to launch immediately.

Deep breath. Force himself to look calmly from face to face.

"I can't ask any of you to . . ." he started

Canderous cut him off immediately. "Haven't we gone through all this before, Revan? Are you so damn insecure that you need us to keep telling you we're with you? Quit navel gazing and get on with it." The Mandalorian inhaled deeply on the cigar he was holding, before blowing out a ring of smoke. His metal hand continued to flex rhythmically around the shiny black sphere it held – some kind of exercise ball designed to help develop fine control in the servos, Tamar knew, but it also resembled a thermal detonator. "Besides, I've developed something of a knack for . . . _negotiating_ with Jedi. Wouldn't miss this for the world."

Off to one side Bastila snorted.

Before Tamar could say anything in response, Mission stepped forward. Her arms were folded determinedly across her chest. "We all agree with the muscle-headed old Mandalorian geezer. We also agree that if you even try to talk us out of this we're going to tie you up and take turns kicking you."

The smile that spread across his lips felt painful. "Well then." He scratched the tip of his nose. "I guess I'd better shut up and do as I'm told."

There was a collective murmur of agreement.

Mission, Zaalbar. Bastila, Jolee. Canderous. Yuthura. The two droids.

The thought of taking HK into the Jedi Temple – of the assassin droid interacting with Jedi Masters – suddenly seemed so ludicrous that it almost drew a chuckle. Almost, but not quite.

Nearly all of them.

Juhani might even be here on Coruscant already. She would have finished dealing with the Bothans at least, he hoped. And if she'd reported to the Jedi Council afterwards . . . well maybe there might be a bit more chance of this going smoothly than he'd dared to let himself hope.

Carth . . .

He realised then that he hadn't thought about Carth at all in weeks, and felt a pang of guilt at the oversight. But it was also a fractional relief, knowing that at least one of them was no longer caught up in this mess.

Even if chasing wild geese on Berchest wasn't anyone's idea of fun.

The collective sense of determination he sensed from every one spoke just as eloquently as Canderous's and Mission's words, so in the end he simply nodded, and walked past them.

He didn't need to look round as they each fell into step behind him.

As they ascended the shuttle's entry ramp together, a subtle but perceptible shudder vibrated through the surrounding metal. No one had to ask what it meant.

They'd arrived.

-s-s-

"Solnar!"

The air was heavy with the acrid reek of smoke. In the near distance, above even the ever-present sound of fighting, came the steady crackle of advancing flames. An artillery shell detonating somewhere close by made everything around them shake, but the ceiling had already fallen in so there was very little danger of them being buried alive.

"Solnar!" The shout was louder this time. "Quickly! Urgent news!"

The man who was called Solnar closed his eyes and gathered himself, stifling a groan as he tried to ignore the lingeringly persistent pain in his back. Before he turned around, he reached up and slid the black steel mask – reminiscent of the skull of some kind of sleek and predatory beast – down to cover his face. It snapped into place with a brittle click.

He drew in a breath. "It is Darth Benightus now, Trajen. Remember that." The mask held a microphone, which made his voice far deeper and richer than it naturally was. "Insolent dog," he added as an afterthought.

A few days earlier, he might have made a show of Force-choking any of his troops impertinent enough to forget his title. A Sith Lord – even a facsimile of one – ignored discipline at his peril. It seemed, however, that you needed to be able to summon some kind of strong emotion – be it rage or hate, or even possibly just irritation – to be able to use the Force for violence.

Right now, the only thing inside him was an echoing void drawn in shades of dreary grey. Darth Benightus. Drowning in ashes. It was hideously apt in its way. He told himself it was simply tiredness – that all he needed was some sleep – but he didn't truly believe that.

Trajen bowed his head and made a half-hearted show of dropping to one knee.

Another artillery shell detonated somewhere nearby, but by this point the explosions were nothing more than background wallpaper. You only actually noticed anymore when you were showered by the gore of someone you'd been speaking to a few moments earlier.

Solnar made a sharp, cutting gesture with one hand. Everything done behind the mask was an act, and that was how Lord Benightus acted. Sometimes recently, it grew difficult to remember even that. "Speak."

"My . . . Lord. It is Vacla. He wishes to report." Trajen extended his hand, proffering a comm. unit.

Solnar just stared at it. Vacla. The name meant nothing.

His breath was coming too quickly behind the mask, and he could feel his face sweating. Sometimes, like now, the mask made him claustrophobic. He had to clench his hands tightly into fists to stop himself reaching up and ripping it off.

Because it surely wouldn't do for anyone to see what their 'master' looked like. Unmarred by scar or tattoo or the ravages of darkside malady; the face of a callow nineteen year old boy. The face of their dark lord, too weary to even feel fear anymore.

He laughed. The microphone removed the brittle hysteria from it and transformed it into something appropriately dark and menacing.

How had it come to this? Auza dead. Malefic gone. Drace, Drin and the Keeper, all fallen in battle. A hundred other names, flitting past. Some of those might even still be alive – someone was obviously still alive to keep fighting this frakking war. Darth Benightus . . .

Darth Benightus, impaled through the chest by a foot long shard of shrapnel. He couldn't remember any pain, and death had been unable to hold onto him. So Darth Benightus had risen and lived on, immortal give or take.

"Vacla, my Lord," Trajen persisted. "On _Chimera_ Station."

And finally, the significance of what Trajen was saying struck him. Chimera Station. Ziost's frontline defence and early warning station. Vacla, one of Darth Benightus's – one of _his_ – most trusted lieutenants.

There had been other reports over the preceding weeks: from Korriz, Thule, Dantalus, Kar Zaran. Invasion fleets, battle, contact being lost. He'd ignored them, despite the fact _they_ were obviously drawing closer. What was he supposed to do, given the problems that were already here on Ziost? It had scarcely seemed remotely relevant while staying alive from one moment to the next had been his primary ambition.

He finally took the comm. unit from Trajen's hand. "Benightus here." It seemed to be the mask that spoke rather than him. "Report."

The comm. crackled and hissed erratically in his ear. "My Lord!" The voice at the end sounded near-hysterical. "A fleet . . ." Static surged wildly. "A fleet . . . hundreds of ships . . . dropped out of hyperspace . . . Star Forge . . . heading straight . . ."

Another shell impact meant the next few words were drowned out entirely.

"Vacla . . ."

"Frak, they're . . . they're opening fire on us . . ." Vacla's voice cut out in a squall of static. This time, it didn't resume again.

Benightus let the comm. unit drop.

It occurred to a part of him then that everyone here had been played for idiots, provoked into destroying each other in this mad grab for power while the real enemy stole everything from under their noses. And now . . . now it was far too late to do anything but stand by and watch as the _coup de grace_ was administered.

_So?_

He couldn't even muster a shrug. Barely aware of what he was doing, he gestured for Trajen to leave him.

And then, alone, Solnar – Darth Benightus, Lord over nothing – looked up and stared at the smoke-veiled stars overhead.

Numbly, he waited for the end to come to Ziost.

All in all, it would probably come as a relief.

-s-s-

Tamar stood before one of the shuttle's viewports, gazing down at the planet filling his view.

Coruscant, capital of the Republic and zero point of the galaxy; seat of the Senate and the Jedi Council. It was – viewed from orbit at least – spectacular in its beauty. The lights of the planet-spanning city glittered like myriad jewels; a bed of stars and swirling constellations. Through the Force, he was aware of the billions of lives spread out below him as a constant, whispering hum – a gently lapping tide.

Looking at it, he couldn't help but be acutely aware of the parallels with the last time he had stood before this view. It almost felt like he could reach out and touch the past from here – or even step across the gap.

Back to the beginning. Or at least, one part of the beginning.

Perhaps the main difference this time, he reflected, was that he knew for certain this time that he was walking into the middle of disaster.

A ghost of a smile touched his lips, showing faintly on his reflection in the transparisteel. _Why so pessimistic,_ an inner voice chided gently. _Haven't you already seen that luck is with you?_

And in the strangest of ways, it was.

Word had obviously leaked ahead of them concerning his impending arrival. An entire flotilla of ships – news couriers, pleasure yachts and tourist skiffs; light transports, runabouts and personal vessels of every possible variety – awaited their emergence from hyperspace. Amidst this teeming, chaotic mess, planetary security forces and the Republic fleet had obviously been caught off guard, and were still vainly in the middle of trying to impose some kind of vague semblance of order on proceedings.

From the moment that the _Unerring Vigilance_ had dropped out of hyperspace, the reaction had been all but inevitable. The vast Republic flagship had been near-instantaneously swarmed – a titanic whale caught in the middle of a shoal of flashing, constantly moving sprats.

A smaller, but still significant number of ships had gathered round Marshal Vexil's converted Mandalorian Destroyer – prompted perhaps by curiosity in the face of the recurrent nightmare from the still too-recent past. The rather shabby and battle-scarred Hutt battlecruiser, on the other hand, had been almost completely overlooked in favour of its sleeker and deadlier looking escorts.

Because it surely stood to reason that Revan would be travelling in style.

No one had challenged their shuttle thus far. No one seemed even to have noticed it.

_Luck, or the Force._

Somehow, neither option was entirely reassuring. But the smile became slightly more solid despite that. At this very moment, Admiral Morna Rey was undoubtedly several entire light years beyond furious.

He sensed Yuthura as she moved quietly to stand at his side and join him in taking in the view. Again, the parallels with the last time he had stood here struck him forcefully. Together then. Together now, at the end.

There were differences of course, and profound ones. This time they didn't say anything. This time they didn't even look at one another.

Nothing remained but to do what they had agreed on. No talk could change that now. All that was left was to see it through.

The shuttle juddered slightly as it hit the outer edges of Coruscant's atmosphere. Full circle.

The countdown had reached zero.


End file.
